Zemindar

by Valerie Fitzgerald

  The petty incidents and minor outbreaks of April and May, those unfocused, ineffective symptoms of a radical grievance, had been but the tinder set to kindle the flame which had leapt to monstrous life at Meerut and spread so swiftly and disastrously to Delhi. Now all Hindustan, all that part of Northern India watered by the great rivers and known as the Gangetic Plain, from Bengal to the Punjab, was in revolt. Meerut, it seemed, had been the signal for the mutiny of the army of Bengal, as Oliver had feared, the blazon that encouraged every aggrieved sepoy to desert his post, break his ‘salt’ and rally to the banner of the Emperor. In his rose-red fort at Delhi, the last of the Moguls, senile and almost blind, spent his time writing poetry, while the men who had been summoned by the magic of his name and ancient state, the men whom he had never led and now could not control, plundered, burned and killed. One by one the British strongholds fell.

  Meerut. Delhi. Allahabad and Agra. Then Ferozepore and Aligarh and a hundred smaller posts. At last Cawnpore, only forty miles away, had fallen too.

  It had been on the Queen’s birthday, the 24th of May, that Sir Henry Lawrence, merely as a precaution, had ordered all the women and children from Mariaon Cantonments, together with the sick of the 32nd Foot, the only Queen’s regiment in the district, into the Residency. The order had caused some alarm, but soon, Kate said, everyone had settled down to the novel, picnic-like existence, refusing to take the threat of danger seriously until more than a week after their entry into the enclosure, when the 71st Native Infantry mutinied, fired bungalows in cantonments, murdered several officers, and then were joined by the greater part of three further native regiments. After that, alarm heightened: the murdered officers had been known personally to many in the enclosure. Other intelligence as bad came in day by day from outlying posts and small stations, brought in by fugitives who had escaped with only their lives; women who had seen husbands murdered by the men they had commanded for years; husbands whose wives and children had been slaughtered or burned to death in blazing thatch-roofed bungalows.

  No one now could dismiss the reality of the danger, but not until the day of our own arrival, that day on which the news had come of the fall of Cawnpore, had even Sir Henry been certain that the Residency would be invested by the mutineers. For a fortnight past, knowing the entire country was in revolt, he had pressed all measures to fortify his little stronghold, in spite of the fact that the only troops he had to defend more than six hundred women and children were one British regiment much depleted by illness, about seven hundred native troops, some of whom at least were thought to be disloyal, and a hundred and fifty civilian volunteers. At first he had hoped that relief, or at least reinforcement, would arrive from Cawnpore, but early in June it was known that Sir Hugh Wheeler, the commander of that garrison, was himself besieged in an inadequate entrenchment by the forces of the Rajah of Bithur, better known to the Europeans of the district, with whom he had been on most amiable terms, as the ‘Nana Sahib’. This intelligence had made apparent the fact that, due to the inadequacy of communications, the incendiary state of the country and the difficulty of transporting troops in a land without railways or metalled roads and whose waterways were now controlled by the enemy, the only remaining hope was to strengthen the Residency, concentrate all Europeans within it, and prepare to withstand a siege.

  ‘So now there can be no doubt that we shall be besieged?’ I asked Kate, as we walked back to the Gaol from the shops.

  ‘Well, there is no reason now why we should not be; with Cawnpore gone, we are entirely cut off, you see. Besides, the servants have begun to leave. A lot of them went yesterday, and this morning my own ayah and bearer, who have been with me for years, have not shown up. That, my dear, is much more significant than all the tidily worked out theories of the pundits round Sir Henry.’

  ‘Gone, have they? Then how are you going to manage, Kate?’ asked Charles.

  ‘Oh, I’ll be all right. George and I have quite a snug little room in the King’s Hospital with the other officers of mutinous regiments. The lads there have so many servants some of them at least are bound to stay on, and I’m sure they will put me in the way of whatever help I need. Of course I’m not much of a cook, so George’s girth will probably diminish. But it looks as though we are not going to have very much to cook anyway!’ she ended cheerfully. ‘Oh, Charles, I nearly forgot to tell you. George asked me to say if you, Toddy and Ishmial will go up to the Resident’s House at about ten, he will see about arms and ammunition and so on, and have you detailed to your posts.’

  ‘Good! I presume we will be officially called volunteers from now on?’

  ‘You will, and a marvellous bunch of brigands you are too: French, Italian, German, Swiss, Irish, of course, Goanese, Eurasians and I don’t know what else besides. Oh, and Laura, a friend of yours is among them—Mr Roberts.’

  ‘Mr Roberts! Good gracious. Poor man, I thought he must be safely in Calcutta by now.’ We had not had time the night before to think of anything but our own predicament, but now the mention of Mr Roberts made me curious as to others of our acquaintance who might be in the Residency. Yes, Major Dearden, Captain Fanning and Major Cussens were all somewhere about, said Kate in reply to my query—and also poor Wallace Avery.

  ‘Wallace here too? And Connie and Johnny?’ Charles sounded pleased to know his cousin-in-law was at hand, but Kate stopped in her tracks, her hand over her mouth.

  ‘I had forgotten! Of course you can’t know about … about what happened. Just as we could not know what happened at Hassanganj. Connie is dead. And Johnny.’

  ‘Oh, no, Kate, not Connie! Poor Connie! What happened?’ I asked, shocked.

  ‘Nobody’s very sure—and it’s impossible to get Wallace to say. It seems he must have been away for a few hours, and when he got back the bungalow had been burned, and Connie and Johnny were dead.’

  ‘Good God! Were they burned in the house?’ Charles asked.

  Kate shook her head. ‘I believe not. He found them in the garden—bayoneted I think, but as I say, one can’t make him talk. He has been here for about a fortnight, and we’ve all tried to comfort him, tried to get him to unburden himself. He just shakes his head, and the moment he’s alone gets out the bottle. He’s so thin now, Laura, you won’t recognize him. We can find no way of helping him.’

  ‘Oh, poor fellow! Poor Wallace, there seems no end to his unlucky streak,’ said Charles, while I remembered watching the shabby buggy drive out of the gate, followed by the bullock-cart of baggage with Polly in his cage on the top. ‘Good girl, Connie, good girl,’ the parrot had squawked as the last flutter of Connie’s handkerchief had disappeared. Irrelevantly, I wondered to myself what had happened to the bird.

  ‘You must find him out, Charles,’ Kate said, ‘and talk to him. Perhaps having someone of his own will make him more communicative—and he was always fond of Emily and Laura. He needs to talk, poor fellow, not shut away all the horror and grief in his own mind to dwell on, as he is doing.’

  ‘But of course, as soon as I have seen George.’

  ‘Yes, and George can tell you where to find him. I’m sure I don’t know where he is, or where any of the men are now in this confusion. But George will direct you.’ She shook her head sadly, and we walked back to the Gaol in silence to break the news to Emily, who had remained behind to feed Pearl.

  It was a long, trying day. The sky darkened, the heat gathered under low clouds, but no more rain fell. Emily and I put away our few possessions, swept out the rooms with a twig broom, tried to cook an edible meal on a fire set between three bricks on the floor, and waited for the men to come in and eat it. Then there was nothing more for us to do but sit on the hard chairs in the sticky heat and pursue our own thoughts. During the morning the last of the troops from cantonments, British and native, marched in cheerfully to add to the congestion, and our neighbour on the Gaol verandah, a very fat woman with an immense bosom and an immoderate number of chins, told us joyfully that her husband was among them, s
o now all would be well. Something in her manner put me in mind of Mrs Wilkins, and Mrs Bonner, like Mrs Wilkins, had one thin and puny daughter, named Minerva.

  Although we tried to keep busy, it was impossible not to think of Connie Avery; but we did not talk of her.

  And always, lurking behind every other thought in my mind, was the thought of Oliver Erskine. What had happened to him? Where could he be? What was there to keep him away from Lucknow now? Had something happened to Yasmina? Had she fallen ill perhaps; or, worse still, fallen into the hands of the mutineers? But they would not surely harm a child of their own blood? Not like little Johnny Avery. It was said that no one was kinder to children than the Indian, no one more foolish, fond and indulgent. They had not indulged Johnny.

  But not even the thought of Johnny’s death could for long deflect my mind from Oliver. He had meant to come straight back to Lucknow. Of that I was sure. So something untoward must have happened to keep him from his purpose. Had someone penetrated his disguise, perhaps? Or some of his own tenants or retainers at Hassanganj betrayed him to the rebels? Or could it be that he had changed his mind after all, and decided to remain in Hassanganj? No, that was impossible. How could he stay there with his house burned, his servants fled, and even Moti, who could have harboured him, dead? In my mind, I went back over all the stages of the road we had travelled together: the dusty mud villages that had seemed so full of hidden eyes; the crowded serais and lonely camping places; the long stretches of rutted track running between sun-baked fields. Anywhere along that road he could have met with discovery and death. And yet … and yet there was something inconceivable in the thought of Oliver lying dead in some dry ditch. I could imagine the scene well enough but credit it not at all. Something of his own belief in his capacity for survival, something of his confidence in himself, had infected me, so that I could not see him overcome by circumstances which, after all, he had deliberately chosen to meet. And, as my anxiety waned, its place was taken by familiar irritation with the man and anger at his thoughtlessness and lack of concern for the rest of us. Surely he must know that we were worried about him? But that was the last thing that would make him change whatever plan he was pursuing.

  CHAPTER 3

  When night fell, Charles brought Wallace to us.

  Charles had spent most of the day drilling with Toddy-Bob and the other volunteers under the eye of a sergeant of the 32nd, in the space in front of the Residency where once, so long ago, they had seen each other for the first time.

  ‘Hullo, hullo, hullo! How good it is to see you two dear ladies again!’ Wallace attempted to greet us with his old convivial heartiness and kissed us both with clumsy fervour; but, as I drew away from him and looked into his face, tears ran freely down his pale, sagging cheeks, and, abandoning his attempt at cheerfulness, he sat down suddenly on the stool, put his head in his hands and cried like a baby. Charles, embarrassed as men generally are by expressed grief, turned away and, with his shoulder against the door post, surveyed the night outside, while Emily and I looked at each other in wordless alarm. I had never seen a man in tears either, and could think of no way in which to meet the situation. It was Emily who, with a true instinct of sympathy, knelt down beside him and put an arm around his shuddering shoulders.

  ‘Poor Wally,’ she murmured. ‘Poor Wally. Don’t mind crying in front of us. We are your family and must share your grief, you know. We are here to help you in any way we can. Oh, Wally!’ And she leaned her head against the table, and wept along with him. I doubt whether she was weeping for Connie and little Johnny; more likely she wept not for them but for the manner of their death? Perhaps her tears were really for herself and Charles and Pearl who, quite unwittingly, were now involved, without understanding or blame, in a force that brought death and mutilation, sorrow and shame, destruction and despair to ordinary people—people with no pretentions to power, people without intentions of evil, people just like herself. I think she wept for the incomprehensibility of life. But whatever the reason for her tears, the very fact that she shed them helped Wallace to master his own emotion. He sat up and mopped his face with a well-worn handkerchief, then looked from my strained face to Charles’s back with a little shrug of self-depreciation.

  ‘Sorry for this exhibition,’ he apologized. ‘The shock, you know. Had no idea you were here; never thought Erskine would be affected by all this in Hassanganj as we have been … here. I knew ours wasn’t the only station that had been disturbed, but Hassanganj—well, one wouldn’t think a place like that could come to any harm. Still! Who would have thought that we … that Connie …’ He stopped, and the ready tears sprang to his protruberant eyes again; but he sniffed and squared his shoulders. Then he fumbled in the pocket of his jacket and produced a bottle of brandy which he set on the table before him.

  ‘A little something … to … to celebrate your safety, y’know. We are lucky enough to have a good supply of spirits down in the mess, and I felt we should, all of us, share a drop tonight. Come, Charles! I shall not give way again. Let us have some glasses, cups, anything we can drink out of. Laura, I expect you are the housekeeper here, as you used to be in Mariaon—where are the glasses?’

  I looked at Charles for confirmation. He nodded to me silently, then came to the table and sat down on an upended packing case which made our fourth seat. I got down our tin cups, and Wallace, with a hand that trembled visibly, poured the brandy. Emily brought a dipper of water from the earthen jar in the corner of the room to add to the liquor, but Wallace waved it away from his own cup, and quaffed the contents with one gulp.

  The wavering yellow light of the lantern fell on a face that, but for its pale eyes, was almost unrecognizable. Wallace had been a rotund man, with a ruddy complexion and a cheerful expression. Now his face had slipped away into folds of slack, putty-coloured flesh, his eyes were red-lidded and underscored with shadow; even his sandy moustache was no longer carefully waxed and curled, but drooped raggedly over slack, moist lips. His eyes were dazed and thoughtless, and put me vividly in mind of how Connie used to look by five in the afternoon.

  ‘Wallace.’ Charles broke the silence in which we had all been sipping the brandy. ‘Wallace, will it help you to tell us what happened? Sometimes to talk of a thing eases the pain a little. You know how fond we were of Connie and Johnny; you know we do not want to talk of her simply from curiosity. Can you tell us what happened?’

  Charles’s voice, well-modulated and pleasant, was full of kindness. But Wallace, after looking up from his mug for an instant, shook his head, and poured himself another liberal measure from the bottle.

  ‘I … I don’t know. I don’t know what happened, and that’s the truth. If I did know, dreadful as it probably was, I think I could bear it better. But I wasn’t there, you see. I … I don’t know whether they burned the bungalow and then, then, killed Connie, or whether they got her first, or anything. If I could only be sure that Johnny—if I could only know that they had no time to realize what was coming to them, but …’

  He shook his head again, passing a sweaty hand over his eyes.

  ‘You see, we were both called away, I and the police fellow, Jenkins, who lived in the next bungalow. There had been trouble in a village down the road the night before, and the thanadar sent for us to make a report. Some pandies had passed through, demanded food and, when they didn’t get it, had set fire to the native police station and one or two other buildings. We were away a couple of hours. On the way back, we smelt the smoke before we were in sight of the bungalows, and somehow we knew something was wrong. We rushed back … but it was all over. It must have been the same lot that had attacked the village we had visited. Must have been hanging around all night, and when they saw us ride off, decided to … well, the bungalows were blazing merrily. There were only the two families in the station. Mrs Jenkins and her two children had been killed on the verandah of the house—our house, that is. They had come across to keep Connie company while I was away. Knew Connie was nervous and di
dn’t like our black brethren at the best of times. The fire had reached them, but we knew it must be them because … because … we found Connie near the servants’ quarters, and Johnny a short distance away—in a bed of cannas. Orange cannas. His ayah—you remember Parbatti?—was still alive, but she died before she could tell us anything. And that was all. There were no troops in the station, just a few police. They helped us to bury … them, and then I decided to come back here. Jenkins was going to stay on, but I advised him to go to the police barracks in Hodipore. Perhaps he did, I don’t know. But there was nothing for me to do there. Records had all gone with my office; everything. Anyway, it was apparent that everything was falling apart, and I thought, I thought I would be more use here, than stuck away on my own in the mofussil.’

  ‘Oh, Wallace, how you must hate them!’ Emily clenched her hands round her mug so tightly that the knuckles showed white. ‘To kill children! What fiends!’

  Wallace looked at her in mild surprise and shook his head.

  ‘No, Emily. I don’t hate them. I hate myself. It was my fault that Connie and Johnny were killed. All my fault!’ And, though he spoke without bitterness, it was with the deepest conviction.

  ‘Good God, Wallace, you mustn’t allow yourself to think like that,’ broke in Charles hurriedly, while Emily looked at Wallace in alarm. ‘You could not have prevented it even if you had been there. They would have killed you too without a thought. Don’t blame yourself, old man.’