Zemindar

by Valerie Fitzgerald

  ‘You have been very good to my poor Elvira and me, Miss Hewitt, in spite of not caring for us,’ she added almost shyly, and then as I made to deny this assertion, held up her hand and silenced me, laughing good-naturedly. ‘No, no! No apologies! We are all what the good Lord made us! You are what you are, we are what we are, and I don’t suppose the Almighty ever intended us to be bosom friends. We don’t deny, Elvira and me, that we would like to be counted as your friends, but we can well see that maybe you would wish otherwise. Now if the Major, my husband, had been with us, maybe you would have thought higher of us. He’s a proper gentleman, my husband, with book-learning at his fingertips just like you and that Mr Roberts. He can talk about politics and that just like the best of ’em, even if he did start life in the Band. Brains, you see! That’s what he has—brains! And it’s brains that makes the difference in life, even more than birth and money. As he always says to me, “What’s the use of a high place in life to a man who hasn’t the sense to make use of it?” ’

  ‘Oh, absolutely!’ I murmured. ‘I certainly wish I could have met Major Wilkins.’

  ‘Well, perhaps you will, perhaps you will. I heard Mr Flood say that you was all hoping to be in Lucknow by the cold weather, and, if that’s so, then perhaps we shall see you, as the Major is stationed for the moment not far outside the city, and no doubt we will have to be in Lucknow for some of the coldweather functions y’know—levées and banquets and that, that has to be attended by anyone in the Major’s position. When a man has to make his way, he can’t afford to neglect such engagements, however much he prefers his own hearth and home, and the Major is a real home bird—and I don’t mind telling you that I believe in putting myself out to keep things cosy for him, just like when we was first married.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure you do!’

  ‘Yes, but that’s not what I wanted to tell you about, Miss Hewitt, and you must be thinking me just a gossiping old woman wasting your time. Maybe you’ll laugh when you hear what I do want to say, but, though Elvira and me have been poorly all this long voyage almost, we still have eyes in our heads. Now I know that your fine relations will do all they can for you, Miss Hewitt, but Elvira and me has talked about things and come to a certain conclusion. We see that you are a young, single lady come to a strange and often cruel land. You have no way of knowing how things will turn out for you while you are here. Of course you have no intention of separating from your relatives, we know, and we hope they are as kind to you as you deserve, which no doubt they are, but there’s all kinds of sicknesses and misadventures out here, Miss Hewitt, which you wouldn’t hardly credit. Why, I’ve known as many fine young men and women cut off in the flower of their days as would fill a fat book. God forbid that this should happen to any of you, but it might, Miss Hewitt, it might. And this isn’t a country in which any young lady should be left alone, which is why Elvira and me want you to know that you can count on us, and the Major of course, for any sort of help you might ever need. Any sort of help!’

  Here Mrs Wilkins heaved herself forward, and seized my hand.

  ‘You are a real Christian young woman, Miss Hewitt, and just between the three of us, Elvira and me doesn’t think a great deal of that hoity-toity young cousin of yours, who uses you like a lady’s maid and orders you about just because she has a husband, and money too, no doubt, and you haven’t! Yes, of course you must deny it, dearie, and that’s only proper seeing as how she is your cousin, but I can see otherwise. Now I’m not saying anything, mind, not suggesting nothing, but if it so happened that some time you wanted to go home without her, maybe, or she fell ill and died say, and you couldn’t properly stay alone with the young gentleman, or if anything happened to make you need more money than you had, well then I want you to remember Gwendoline Wilkins.’

  Embarrassment and chagrin fought for precedence in my mind as Mrs Wilkins’s pudgy moist hand clasped mine tenderly, and her boot-button eyes regarded me earnestly from under the fringe of orange curls. I had thought all my secrets so safely kept, and yet somehow this coarse, kind and acute woman had discovered them. A change had indeed taken place in Emily since her marriage; I had observed it with some surprise at first—are we not all surprised to see the people we love grow up and grow away from us? Emily had always been petted and spoiled and I had never thought twice of her habit of ‘ordering me around’, as Mrs Wilkins had put it. In the early days at Mount Bellew I had complied with her petty dictations as the rest of the family had, and now it was habit. Less easy to forgive were the condescending airs she had assumed towards me since becoming a wife, her sometimes deliberate lack of consideration when requiring some service from me, and a tone of voice nicely blended to convey contempt and irritation. I had put it down to the headiness of her new state in life, not wishing to think her capable of considering me inferior because I was dependent, but during the voyage it had become increasingly clear that, whatever my status might have been when I left home, my position in my cousin’s household was likely to become that of a superior domestic rather than a favoured friend. If I allowed it to! There had been times when I was genuinely hurt by her attitude; when I wished I had not allowed myself to be overruled by my relatives, and that I had persevered in my intention of obtaining a post as governess in some genteel household.

  ‘I am sure you are most kind,’ I said, somewhat stiffly, ‘but I assure you I am not in want of any material aid, nor can I imagine any circumstance which would make me so.’

  ‘Aye, I’m sure you can’t, m’dear, but then you haven’t seen as much of life or of India as I have. Now’—and she dismissed the matter of Emily from her mind—‘I have something I want to show you, just so that you don’t think my promise of help is another polite nothing. I have a little hoard of my own, which I can do with as I please without taking the bread out of my family’s mouth. Be sure the door is shut fast, Ellie!’

  Elvira turned the key in the lock, and stood with her back to the door and her arms crossed over her flat bosom, like a soldier on guard.

  Mrs Wilkins lowered her voice to a whisper.

  ‘I have a fortune in my garter,’ she breathed.

  For a moment I wondered whether her protracted suffering from sea-sickness had unhinged her mind, and could only look on in silence as she began to draw up her purple skirts until she had exposed to my view one stout leg clothed in a white cotton stocking and fastened just below the knee by a wide black garter.

  She unclasped this band and held it out for my inspection.

  ‘Go on, look at it!’ she urged.

  I examined the garter. It was made of black satin bordered with lace, and was unexceptional enough. I surmised that Elvira had embroidered her mama’s initials on it, and turning it over discovered the inside was quilted with the same pink silk used in the monogram.

  ‘Yes, that’s it, that’s it,’ chuckled Mrs Wilkins. ‘On the inside.’

  I ran my finger round the quilting, and, as I was beginning to suspect, my touch discovered a series of hard lumps, and on a closer inspection found that some of these were large enough to be visible to the eye. I handed the thing back, unable to repress a smile at Mrs Wilkins’s patent triumph.

  ‘Eighteen pearls in there,’ she whispered as she refastened the garter below her knee. ‘And four diamonds; an emerald like a pigeon’s egg, and seven fine rubies! A small fortune for anyone, and a big one for me! My husband took ’em off a dead man on a battlefield—sewn all over his jacket they was, and the emerald in his turban. Oh, no! Don’t look like that’—as I shrank back—‘it all happened so long ago, before we was even married in fact, when the Regiment was fighting in one of the states, it was. You’ve no need to worry about the man who wore ’em. He was quite dead. There used to be two more pearls, but one I sold to get passage money when my first baby died, and one to get weddin’ clothes for my Ellie, but the marriage never did happen.’

  ‘I am so sorry,’ I said to Elvira.

  ‘Yes, tragic it was!’ continued her mothe
r with the complacent enjoyment that the mention of disaster produces in certain women. ‘A beautiful man ’e was too! Charlie was his name, with a flowing golden beard almost down to his waist. ’E died!’

  ‘Shot?’ I hazarded politely, my mind still wandering on jewel-strewn battlefields.

  ‘Cholera!’ volunteered Elvira in a subdued voice.

  ‘Yes! Dead as mutton six hours after ’e took it! But don’t mind that now. What I want you to remember is this, dearie, that if ever you are in trouble or want for anything that money can buy, you have only to write to Gwendoline Wilkins! There’s not many as would have done as much as you have for as little cause, Miss Hewitt. Well do I remember that port-wine jelly that you made for us down in the hot galley when the whole ship was bucking like a bee-stung horse. Settled a treat on my stomach did that jelly, even if it was a mite too wet, the first thing in days that did, and only due to your goodness. Now that’s not the sort of thing that can be repaid with money, not any amount of money, but things being as they are, us coming out of different boxes like, my little nest egg is all that we have to offer you, so, believe me, it’s yours for the asking. The jewels will be safe enough there,’ and she patted her leg chuckling, ‘for I’m a saving sort of woman, can’t abide waste, whatever my other faults may be. I’ll not squander ’em, so they’ll be ready for you when you want ’em.’

  It was difficult to know what to say. I was overwhelmed by shame at the arrogance and lack of feeling that had allowed me to jeer—only in my own mind, I was relieved to realize—at these two warm and genuine women, whose lack of education and social finesse were so amply compensated by honesty and generosity. I did the only thing possible under the circumstances. I bent down and kissed Mrs Wilkins’s patchouli-scented cheek, and then, turning, did the same to Elvira.

  ‘Our address,’ gulped Elvira, dabbing at her eyes and handing me an envelope. ‘It’s the regimental headquarters, and will find us wherever they send Papa.’

  ‘Thank you. I don’t know what else to say, but thank you! I do sincerely hope we will meet again, and I shall certainly always remember your kind offer.’

  I backed towards the door, and left the cabin with Mrs Wilkins’s last words following me: ‘You deserve well, Miss Hewitt. God grant you only good!’

  CHAPTER 4

  It was late afternoon when we eventually got ashore. The port of Calcutta was thronged with vessels and we dropped anchor in midstream among a multitude of ships from every nation: big three-masters from Holland, Portugal and distant China and a British man-o’-war towered over a jostling crowd of skiffs, bumboats, fishing-smacks and out-riggered canoes. We were all packed and ready to disembark long before the small boats came alongside to take us off, and crowded the rails inspecting the river traffic, marvelling at the opium ships, the tall tea-clippers, the neat small steam packets that were now used for coastal trade, and most of all at a large American vessel, ungainly and ugly, which Mr Roberts said was propelled by means of a steam-engine on its upper deck.

  Despite our readiness and my impatience, we were the last of the passengers to leave the ship, Charles having decided to wait until a large tender that the Captain had ordered came to take us and our baggage ashore together, so that we would not have to await our possessions’ arrival on the dockside.

  I was sorry to see the last of Mr Roberts, and hoped that he would indeed call on us as promised. The Wilkins ladies went ashore with the washed-out soldiers, Mrs Wilkins waving a pink-and-purple-striped parasol until they were obscured by the hull of another ship.

  In spite of the bustle on deck as sailors readied the hatches for the unloading of cargo, and officers with lading bills passed busily too and fro making calculations with stubs of pencil and hailing each other for information, I felt curiously lonely and lost standing at the rail for the last time as the shadows grew long and the swift dusk descended. Our time aboard had been a little lifetime in itself, distinct from everything that had gone before and from everything that would follow. Soon it would have no more importance—as the promises of Mr Roberts and the Wilkinses would perhaps have no more importance. At that moment I doubted that we would ever see each other again. The tide of daily life would soon wash over the small indentations left by their personalities upon ours and ours upon theirs; in a matter of months we would find it difficult to remember their names, impossible to recall their faces and would have forgotten, most probably, even those things that most irritated and annoyed us in each other, and that had sometimes assumed such disproportionate significance during the confinement of the long voyage.

  Emily, however, knew no such sentiments. She was assured, now that we had the tender to ourselves, of making her arrival in Calcutta a moment of some glory, and was concerned only with the set of her gown over her hoops and keeping her bonnet close over her ears so that her hair would not be disarranged. The Captain himself helped us into the tender and waved us away with every appearance of cordiality, a small attention much appreciated by Emily. I did not look back as we were carried through the shipping to shore.

  We were met on the dock by Mr and Mrs Chalmers, a middle-aged couple, both stout, florid and smartly dressed, with whom we were to reside while in the city. Mr Chalmers was a business associate of my Uncle Hewitt’s (and therefore of Charles’s) and, while he and Charles remained behind to see to the conveyance of our baggage, Emily and I accompanied Mrs Chalmers to her carriage through a crowd of Calcutta citizens come to see the new arrivals, all dressed in their best, some promenading along the dirty dock, some seated in open carriages, but all alike unashamedly interested in the appearance of Emily and my less resplendent self. So much so, indeed, that I was grateful to be on my way at last, seated beside Mrs Chalmers on one seat, while Emily spread her skirts out elegantly on the other and rested one white-gloved hand on the knob of her long parasol with a truly patrician droop of the wrist.

  However I soon forgot her nonsensical airs. The carriage was an open landau which enabled me to take in something of the city and its life as we passed through it, and I found myself pleased and surprised by the generally sophisticated appearance of it all. The streets were broad and clean and lined by fine trees, many of them in flower, while the houses, each set in its own large garden, were well-proportioned and imposing, though naturally of a very different style to anything known at home. It was the hour of the evening promenade and the residents were out riding or driving, many of the ladies elegantly dressed, and many of the men in fine military uniforms, with good horses under them and native grooms running at their horses’ tails.

  ‘I think we shall do very well in India,’ said Emily with some condescension, looking around her with deceptive coolness. ‘Only think how pleasant it will be when we have our own carriage and drive out with Charles beside us on a fine mount and a little black boy running along behind him!’

  ‘Very pleasant—except for the little black boy,’ I answered drily.

  ‘Oh la, Miss Hewitt,’ said Mrs Chalmers, ‘don’t waste pity on the boys! Believe me, they are much more content to run at a horse’s heels and earn a good wage than remain in their homes and starve!’

  I said no more as I was still conscious of my ignorance of the country, but I noticed few natives in the part of the city through which we drove who gave any sign of poverty. They appeared self-respecting and well-mannered, pursuing their own avocations quietly and without any interest in their white fellow citizens. When I observed as much to Mrs Chalmers, saying I had thought to have seen many more of the native population on the streets, she told me that the Indians generally were not allowed on the streets during the promenade hours—only the rich ‘and they are nothing but merchants and money-lenders and such’, she added contemptuously, ‘though of course since the Nawab of Oudh took a house in Chowringhee and brought all his relations and friends with him, there have been a lot more of them around than there used to be in these parts.’ She sniffed disapprovingly.

  ‘The Nawab of Oudh?’ said Emily.
‘Does he live in Calcutta too?’

  ‘Yes indeed, and no credit to the city either! Came here after he was deposed, y’know, and lives in such style and at Government expense, that you’d never believe it! Mr Chalmers says he doesn’t know what the Governor General is about in allowing him to live in the greatest luxury, with all his family and his servants and officials about him, and even a menagerie, of which they say he is excessively fond—lions and tigers and so on—when all the world knows he is the most worthless creature living and well deserved to be knocked off his gadhi.’

  ‘Gadhi?’

  ‘Throne! Mr Chalmers says if poor Lord Dalhousie were still here, the Nawab would soon be cut down to size, but Lord Canning, the new man, y’know, is altogether a different sort of character. Too good. Too tolerant. It’s just as well the country is as peaceful and quiet as it is at the moment, Mr Chalmers says, because otherwise there’s no telling what might happen. As it is all Lord Canning has to do is to continue on the lines laid down by Lord Dalhousie, and long may it continue to be so.’

  ‘Oh, but poor creature! It must be terrible for a man who has been a king suddenly to find himself a no one,’ commiserated Emily. ‘Whatever did he do that was so dreadful?’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t only this Nawab. Oh, no! It was his father too, and his grandfather and I don’t know how many others before them. They were all a bad lot. Drink, don’t you see, and opium and extravagance and … debauchery. Of every kind! Why, this one even went through the streets of his own city playing his drums like a common tamasa-wallah—a strolling showman I suppose you would say—with all the population looking on, and never gave a thought to the running of his kingdom, which has fallen into the most dire state as a result of his neglect, so that now the Government has had to step in and take it over entirely to put things to right. And after all that, the Nawab is allowed to bring his menagerie to Calcutta with him!’