And she was there.
She was standing on the veranda, speaking with a woman old enough to be her grandmother. She seemed ill at ease, fluttering her fan and attempting to act in the genteel and refined manner of all young white ladies in India.
As soon as she saw him her whole demeanour instantly changed – leaning over the veranda rail to speak down to him with all the excited enthusiasm of a starry-eyed girl of sixteen.
‘Miss Jarvis!’ the lady behind her was outraged. A moment later Maria Morley appeared, dragging her young sister away from the rail; and from then on Jane was remorselessly chaperoned.
Fortunately, James Morley had not attended. Even so, it was only due to the constant efforts of John Forbes to distract Maria Morley's attention from her sister, persuading her to step forward and watch the wonderful Edward Grant take the bat, which enabled Lachlan to snatch a short time alone with Jane.
She seemed glad to be able to confide in him again. ‘Most of the women here seem to have never even heard of Antigua,’ she whispered. ‘All they talk about is England, England and dear old Blighty. Why do they call it that?’
‘Belait,’ he said smiling. ‘It’s the Hindi word for Britain, only very few of them can say it properly.’
‘The people here are so different to Antigua,’ she continued wistfully. ‘No laughter or fun in any of them, just rules and regulations and decorum at all times.’
‘Aye, that’s the way in British Bombay,’ Lachlan agreed. ‘In time you’ll get used to it.’
Jane shook her head in denial, then turned to him enthusiastically, ‘Tell me some more about your adventures in the West Indies. Banish my homesickness, if just for a little while. Did you like it there? Or did you simply love it?’
Ignoring the cricket, they stood talking together for some time, until Jane clapped her hands and laughed outright, a laugh so full of humour and unrestrained that all the women turned to look at her and it seemed, extraordinarily, as if the air had suddenly chilled. Her open and natural laughter appalled them.
Aware that such behaviour was not acceptable Jane pressed her lips together and lowered her head as if in shame, but smiling at him all the while out of her laughing brown eyes.
‘Jane!’ Maria Morley arrived, excused herself and her sister, and ushered the heavenly young creature away.
With perfect courtesy he had stepped aside, but he watched her go, back into the protective company of the women. No, he realised, she was definitely not a young lady who would fit in well with the society of British Bombay. There was too much of the Caribbean in her ways, as untamed as Antigua … She suddenly turned and looked over her shoulder, her dark eyes meeting his in one final smiling glance.
*
‘It’s not that I have anything against the man personally,’ James Morley explained to Jane the following morning. ‘It’s simply due to the fact that Macquarie is a junior officer who possesses no wealth or private fortune of his own. A penniless captain. And he’s been in India long enough to know the rules about place and position and wealth and courtship. So any interest he has thus far shown in you, m’dear, is clearly based on a desire to get his hands on your money.’
‘I have no money,’ Jane replied. ‘You have it all.’
‘I am simply holding it for you,’ Morley insisted. ‘As your brother-in-law and guardian, and as your only protector here in India.’
Jane looked down as a small bird danced around her feet. She was sitting in a wicker chair on the partially-screened veranda leading from her bedroom and overlooking the back garden, wearing a lacy blue robe known as a ‘tea gown’, her lovely chestnut hair falling long and loose around her shoulders.
‘And you think …’ she said thoughtfully, `that I need protection from Captain Macquarie?’
‘I most certainly do! Don’t you know that most of those soldiers only come out here to India in search of a fortune to take back to Britain? Why else would they put up with the unbearable heat? The incessant flies and the dust, the stupid natives?’
Jane was still watching the small bird thoughtfully. ‘Is that why you came to India, James? In search of a fortune? Is that why you married my sister?’
James Morley almost chocked on his breath, just as his wife Maria appeared in the open doorway from the bedroom. ‘James, do let Jane finish her breakfast. She is not even dressed. It’s hardly seemly for you to – ‘
‘I was simply warning her about that soldier!’ James expostulated. ‘She needs to understand – ‘
‘No you need to understand,’ Jane said calmly, `that I am not the slightest bit interested in that soldier. I gave him a few dances one night, that’s all.’
Maria stared at her. ‘You’re not interested in him? Then why did you make such a disgrace of yourself at Mr Forbes’ house yesterday? Flirting with him like a floozy!’
‘I was bored,’ Jane confessed tiredly. ‘Bored with all the snooty women complaining about their servants, and bored with all the talk of how things are done so much better in dear old Blighty.’
‘Oh, Jane,’ Maria said reproachfully, ‘that is not a kind or polite way to speak about the British ladies here in Bombay. And if you are not interested in Captain Macquarie, then why put us through such worry? Why didn’t you just say you were not interested?’
‘I might have done, if he had once entered my thoughts in the time between the two meetings, but as he didn’t…’ Jane shrugged carelessly. ‘May I finish my breakfast now?’
‘Well, thank God that’s settled,’ James Morley said with relief, then added firmly, ‘But remember, Jane, in any future social gatherings, interested or not, I insist that you have nothing more to do with that soldier, not one word is to be spoken to him nor even a look in his direction. Is that understood? So now …’ he nodded towards her breakfast tray, `carry on with your chota, carry on.’
He left the room abruptly with Maria turning to follow at his heels. A wave of outrage swirled through Jane as she felt the injustice of his edict, the restraint of her freedom to even look at any person he did not approve of.
Minutes later she saw both of them again, walking in the garden, James still prattling non-stop and Maria nodding timidly in agreement with his every word. An incongruous couple in every way, a fifty-year-old man with his twenty-four-year-old wife. He looked and acted more like Maria’s father than her husband. Why on earth had she married him? Where or what was the attraction? But Maria had married him, and now she too was also was forced to put up with him.
She stood up and moved down the veranda, staring defiantly at the couple with her dark eyes. How dare they suggest that Lachlan Macquarie’s sole interest in her was due to her wealth, or as James always called it, her fortune? How dare he demean Lachlan in such a way when she herself had already come to the realisation that no man in the world could be as mean or as money grabbing as her guardian.
She moved back into her bedroom, still thinking moodily. Well, if James Morley believed that he could order her in the same way he ordered his wife, then he obviously did not know her as well as he thought he did. She was a child of the Caribbean and she was not shackled with the petty prejudices of all these self-important civil servants in the East India Company. And she had not come to India to be ordered about like a slave by her odious brother-in-law.
Sitting on her bed, she slipped her hand under the pillow and withdrew the letter she had received from Lachlan Macquarie the previous evening. A smile shaped her lips as she read his words, even though she had already read the letter a dozen times. Moments later she walked over to her small desk and sat down to write a long reply, explaining in all honesty about her guardian’s mandate that she was to have no further contact with him.
‘Of course, there is a valid reason why they dislike all soldiers, especially young officers, and hopefully one day I will be able to explain that reason to you, when you will then realise why it is foolish to take their dislike of you now so personally, but in the meantime …’
&nb
sp; Later that day, chaperoned by her trusted Ayah, Jane left the house for her afternoon walk, heading towards the small park of gardens where, she had told Captain Macquarie in her letter, she would be taking a stroll at four o’clock.
*
Less than a month later, James Morley felt compelled to once again enforce his rule, although he had already decided that Jane’s unsuitable behaviour was not really her fault. It was all due to the fact that she had been brought up on a small, uncivilised island, where her mother had died young, and so the child was left to run wild in the care of black slaves who had spoilt her. Thank God that Maria had been sent to England for her education as a lady. Although why the same arrangement had not been made for Jane was still a mystery.
He asked Maria.
Maria shrugged. ‘It was simply impossible. She was only ten years old and had become too attached to Mammy Dinah, refusing to leave her, crying and running away until Papa was forced to send me on without her.’
‘And her schooling?’
‘Oh yes, she was well schooled, Papa saw to that. She attended the Missionary school at St John’s.’
‘Well, I intended to be very mild in my remonstrations with her,’ James said, ‘but as she got out of going to England for her education simply because she refused to go, I see now that I shall have to be very firm with her indeed. She shall not be allowed to refuse me.’
Throughout dinner he kept his eyes fixed on Jane, but she seemed unaware of his gaze, her mind miles away, not even answering when he finally addressed her.
‘Of course, Jane, I do realise this behaviour of yours is all due to your inexperience in society, but it has to stop.’
Jane finally looked at him.
‘Most afternoons you go out walking, is that not so?’
‘Yes, I do.’
Morley pulled the linen napkin from his neck, threw it on the table, and sat back in his chair. ‘The position of white women here in India is very different to Antigua,’ he said gravely. ‘In British Bombay it is not considered decorous or decent for a young woman to go out walking alone.’
Jane looked surprised. ‘But, James, I am never alone – I am always accompanied and chaperoned by my Ayah?’
‘Not good enough.’ James flicked his hand dismissively. ‘These promenades of yours have to stop. I forbid you to go out walking unless you are accompanied by your sister; and even then, I insist that one of the male servants accompany both of you.’
Jane flushed, as though he had struck her in the face. ‘But you cannot forbid … I have a right …’
‘You have no rights! Until you are twenty-one or you marry, you are my ward. And as my ward you shall follow my rules and my advice. And do not for a moment consider refusing – because a refusal is something I will not accept. Is that understood?’
Jane glanced at Maria who quickly averted her eyes, her face as flushed as Jane’s, her head lowered over her plate.
‘Is that understood? James repeated.
After a long stillness, Jane finally spoke, the word coming with a desperate effort through her stiff lips. ‘Yes.’
Standing up quickly, she left the room and the house, losing herself in the shaded areas of the garden until the tears finally came, relieving her rage.
FOUR
Two months later, in the month of May, General Sir Robert Abercrombie decided to host another grand event at Government House. Sir Robert had declared that in his opinion, during a time of peace, it was very important for the British Military to show the British civilians in Bombay some sociability
‘Not my opinion at all,’ Sir Robert confessed to Colonel Balfour. `An order from the Commander-in-Chief, Lord Cornwallis.’
‘That dear old duck,’ Balfour said amiably. `He was just the same in America, constantly hosting social events for those of the American gentry who remained loyal to the British crown. Now I hear that he is constantly dining in the company of maharajas over there in Bengal.’
‘Yes, well I have a few maharajas on my own guest list,’ Abercrombie confided. ‘It’s time to build a few bridges after that business in Mysore, don’t you think?’
‘Oh, I do,’ Balfour agreed. ‘And if we can’t build new bridges we can at least try to mend those that are damaged. Don’t worry, Sir Robert, the night will be a sparkling success for everyone. I shall see to all the arrangements myself, just as you ask.’
*
On the night, Captain Macquarie was once again on duty, but this time, under the watchful eye of Colonel Balfour, he did not take time out to dance.
In fact, James Morley hardly saw the captain at all, and as the night wore on he was very pleased to see Jane continually dancing with a very eligible civil servant who had made enough money in India to buy half of London if he ever decided to return there.
A very good potential marriage prospect indeed.
True, the civil servant was a lot older than Jane, a widower in his early fifties, but a woman could not have everything. After all, he himself had been a forty-eight-year-old widower when he had married Maria three years ago, and she only twenty-one. But he knew that he would never have won Maria without the wealth he had made in India. Maria's father had accepted his proposal solely on the condition that he would keep her in the rich and comfortable lifestyle to which she was accustomed. And so far, in his opinion, their marriage was working perfectly well.
But where was Maria now?
In the supper-room James Morley stood waiting by one of the rows of long buffet tables covered in dishes containing roast chicken, cutlets of lamb, curry, rice, chuppatis, mutton pie and so many other dishes that made the juices in his corpulent stomach groan with impatience.
What the devil was keeping Maria and Jane? Why women took so long preening themselves up in the dressing-rooms before supper was one of the worst irritations men had to suffer. Did they have no consideration for a man's stomach?
Guests jostled back and forth past him and James noticed their plates were, as usual, overloaded with food. It was laughable now to recall how he had been warned before his arrival in Bombay that the humid heat of India destroyed the appetite – yet he still had to discover any evidence of that. Personally, he loved the pleasures of the table more now than he ever did, more than he had previously loved women, and almost as much as he loved wealth.
He looked again at the tables of food with a plunderer's lusty eye, but as ravenous as he was, to start tucking in before his wife arrived was simply not done.
He decided to alleviate the torture by taking a brief stroll in the gardens at the rear of Government House. The night was very clear, the cool stillness of the garden pleasantly refreshing after the heat inside which even the swishing punkahs could not relieve.
He strolled across the moonlit lawn, savouring the quiet beauty of the night, his footsteps inaudible on the evening-watered grass. He turned to the right, towards a group of flame trees, his eyes musing on the glory of tropical moonlight, when he noticed a curious scene by one of the trees that made his eyes blink in puzzlement ... Jane ... in close and intimate conversation with Captain Macquarie!
The moonlight only emphasised the white rage that milked James Morley's face as he stared at the two figures by the flame tree. And when the soldier lowered his head and kissed Jane's mouth — blasphemy hovered on Morley's lips.
But a cunning sense swiftly intervened and – No, he thought. No, it would not be him that was reduced to a quivering state of indignity as a result of outraged shouting. No, he would simply wait for them to draw apart and when Macquarie looked around and saw him standing just a few yards away, it would be him, the offender, who would have to find the babbling explanations and apologies that would be received with nothing more than his own frozen stare of contempt.
Morley waited, and waited, but the kiss was endless. He watched in astonishment as Jane's arms moved around the soldier’s body. The minutes that followed seemed incredible to him as he stood in wonder and witnessed their strange intensity. He be
gan to feel uneasy standing there, watching two people who thought they were alone, as if all sound was blanked out, as if the contact of their bodies and lips was appeasing some hungry heathen god.
An ambiguous feeling began to replace Morley's anger, a feeling of being old, cramped, and a desperate desire to be somewhere else – anywhere else away from here.
Silently, he moved away.
Ten minutes after his own return, Jane entered the supper-room, a sudden burning colour tingeing her already flushed cheeks as she looked at the white face of her brother-in-law and the nervous tremblings of her sister.
A few minutes later the Morleys and their ward left Government House.
*
It was no less than an ambush! That was the only way Lachlan could describe James Morley's action the following morning. Minutes after he had risen and dressed and before he had even breakfasted the man had gained access to his quarters and cornered him in a tirade of angry accusations.
‘I knew from the beginning that you were no better than all the other rogues in the licentious soldiery!’
Lachlan wondered briefly if he could arrest him or kill him for disturbing him so early. He spoke as mildly as he could. ‘No, sir, you insult me, I am not a rogue.’
‘Well you are certainly no gentleman – no matter what your old commanding officer says about you! Because if you were a real gentleman, you would desist in paying such particular attentions to my sister-in-law in view of all society. Since that first night your attentions have stimulated every tongue in Bombay to wag and are causing her family great distress. Do you not realise, sir, that your conduct could prevent offers of marriage being made to her!’
Morley had clearly come prepared for battle, but as Lachlan was so unprepared he decided to answer with the truth. ‘It is my understanding, sir, that my conduct has done no more than secure your sister-in-law's affection.’
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