Zemindar

by Valerie Fitzgerald

  We were sitting in comfortable silence with the doors open, watching night close over the entrenchment, when Ungud, naked but for his loincloth and carrying a staff in his hand, appeared on the front verandah. He salaamed politely, but refused to sit down. He was still hurt at our reception of his story of the escape of Lieutenant Delafosse.

  ‘I cannot stay,’ he said gruffly. ‘I go out again—now!’ He looked directly at me as he spoke and there was an aggrieved note in his voice. ‘I do not go out because I wish to know what has happened to Havelock Sahib or the bilaiti paltan, though that indeed must be known and that is what they think. I go out to find the Lat-sahib—or to find news of him. Inglis Sahib has paid me much; enough to keep a man such as I am, with all my relatives, for my life. Now he says he will pay me again, five hundred English pounds, if I come back with news of Havelock Sahib for him. I do not need the money, Mem. I do not want the money, Mem. But if this is the only way I can find the Lat-sahib, then I will take it. But I go not for the money but for the Lat-sahib. I will come back with the information the Sahib-log need. But first I will find out the truth about my Sahib. And if I find the truth this time, then I will go out no more. Whatever the truth may be.’

  He paused and surveyed us all with something between sorrow and disdain. He was a skinny little man, and his brown skin had taken on the grey tinge of age, though he was probably younger than he looked. As he stood in the doorway, with the light of the dip playing on his bent shoulders and thin shanks, we were aware of an immense strength of purpose, a great devotion and an admirable dignity in his air and bearing. I felt humbled by his belief in himself and in his master and ashamed that I was incapable of the like.

  ‘If I do not return,’ he continued, speaking slowly so that I should have no difficulty in understanding. ‘If I do not return, and the Lat-sahib lives, then tell him that Ungud died in his service—and in that of the Raj. That is all, Mem. Salaam!’ He lifted his staff in salute and padded away into the hostile night.

  ‘Poor devil!’ said Charles pityingly.

  ‘’E’ll be all right, sir,’ put in Toddy sharply. ‘And if anyone can find out anything about the Guv’nor, it’s Ungud. Good luck to ’im, that’s all I can say!’

  ‘And Amen to a’ that,’ agreed Jessie tranquilly.

  For some reason Ungud’s visitation, like the abrupt apparition of an angry hurried ghost, cast a gloom over our party, and before long we corked up the precious bottle of brandy and bade our guests goodnight. The brandy put me to sleep quickly, but several times I woke to find Kate also awake. At last she voiced the thought that was disturbing our rest.

  ‘I’m wondering and wondering if he’ll manage to get through the city.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s out already,’ I whispered.

  ‘Not out of the city, so vast and sprawling as it is.’

  ‘He’s done it before, Kate.’

  ‘Surely, but God help the poor creature just the same. I believe he meant it when he said the money meant nothing to him.’

  ‘He’d have little to spend it on, anyway. But there’s no doubt he is truly anxious to find … to find news of Oliver. He and his family for generations were born at Hassanganj. Oliver means something to him.’

  ‘Aye, he was always a man that inspired devotion was Oliver. When it wasn’t loathing, that is. Just like his grandfather before him. There were no half-measures about the Erskine men.’ She sighed and again tried to sleep.

  I had no doubt that Ungud would perform his errand for the Sahib-log with success. He would contrive to make his way through Lucknow to where General Havelock was waiting to push through to our rescue, ascertain the reasons for the General’s delay, and return with his intelligence to Brigadier Inglis.

  But how could he possibly hope to discover Oliver’s fate?

  I knew something now of the vast populations that throng any Indian city, populations that eddy and surge like the waves of the sea but with less explanation. They come and go, these anonymous multitudes, from the seething bazaars and tenements to homes in scattered hamlets, always restless, always on the move, their peregrinations appearing to Western minds as mysterious as they are frequent, drifting for no discernible reason from city to village or from one tumbled dwelling to another precisely like it. Now, to confound confusion, armies marched and countermarched over the tired plains of ancient India, erasing each other’s paths as they went, fighting, marauding, plundering, laying waste the anguished husbandry of the patient men who tilled the battlefields and ploughed the new-made graves. Where, in such a maelstrom of movement, among so many conflicting streams and passing currents, could Ungud hope to discover the trail that Oliver might have left behind him? The notion was absurd.

  I watched anxiously for Ungud’s return, nevertheless.

  Six days passed without bringing news of him, but then, on the 23rd of September, Charles told us that Ungud had returned the previous night with news that General Havelock would ‘without doubt’ be in Lucknow within a fortnight. I, personally, received the news with small enthusiasm. There had been so many other times when the relief was heralded as being ‘no more than a week’, or ‘within five or six days’, or ‘certainly no more than a fortnight’ away, that now my scepticism was not to be overcome even by the delight of the men in the hospital.

  ‘Only think on it, miss!’ one of the wounded said to me that afternoon. ‘A couple o’ weeks and this’ll be be’ind us. Clean air, miss, and real bread wi’ butter inches thick on it, meat as don’t crawl off’n your plate by its tod, and all the rum a man can drink!’

  His method of expression was perhaps primitive, but the sentiment behind it was universal. Everybody in the entrenchment had drawn up a favourite menu with which he hoped to celebrate deliverance, and even the longed-for letters from ‘Home’ took second place to food in one’s mythology of liberation.

  I tried to share in my patient’s enthusiasm, but a dead weight of fatigue and apathy allowed me only to mouth the acceptable words. I felt nothing.

  I was glad to leave the hospital and wait for Ungud’s visit, hoping he would have some news for me as well as Brigadier lnglis, but darkness fell without his coming. We ate and eventually the others went to bed. Still I waited. Mosquitoes whined in the small room and, despite the drop in temperature, it was stuffy, so I dragged my stool on to the verandah. Musket and rifle spat irregularly in the darkness but I hardly heard them, intent as I was on picking up the shuffle of one pair of bare feet moving towards me. Men talked in low voices where they sat on the verandahs snatching an hour with their wives, cleaning their weapons as they talked. Occasionally someone passed, softly whistling a snatch of a song, and in the distance I caught the strains of female voices raised in treble hymns. Children wailed the thin, tired wail that all children had acquired during those months, and up the verandah I heard the drone of Mrs Bonner’s voice as she read some ‘improving’ literature to Minerva at bedtime. A gun was manhandled to a new position amid grunts of strain and tired swearing. Far away a sentry barked a sharp ‘Who goes there?’ at the officer on duty making his rounds. These things I heard, but what I listened for was Ungud, and Ungud did not come.

  I told myself that he was too exhausted, or conversely that he had been sent out again immediately with another message. But when I eventually snuffed out the wick in the saucer dip, I could acknowledge to myself that he had not come because he had no news to give. He was ashamed to admit the failure I knew I must accept.

  CHAPTER 2

  I was too tense and tired to sleep that night, or perhaps, more truly, too disappointed. After hours of restless darkness, day broke and I forced myself to continue the routine of my life. I dressed, washed and ate, did my few chores and then accompanied Kate to the hospital, but I hardly knew what I was doing. I moved among the beds like an automaton, too tired to speak, sometimes not even hearing when I was addressed, and eventually my exhaustion became apparent to others than Kate. At midday Dr Partridge mixed me a sleeping draught and
ordered me back to the Gaol with instructions to take it immediately I got indoors. I complied gladly, and as the draught took effect, sank gratefully into unconsciousness.

  I slept, with two brief intervals of wakefulness, for nearly twenty-four hours, and at that Kate had to waken me.

  ‘Come now, Laura,’ she said as I groped my way through mists of sleep. ‘Come now, it’s time you were stirring. I’ve a bite of food here, two English biscuits and a pot of tea that Dr Partridge sent down for you, good man that he is. Poor love! You’re plain tired out and small’s the wonder, but sit up now and sup your tea while it’s hot, for there’ve been great doings while you’ve slept and I’m dying to tell you of them.’

  ‘Oh, Ungud’s been!’ I said at once.

  ‘No, not that, at least not yet, woman dear, but he’ll come. No, but the relief’s here. The relief is really here!’

  ‘The relief?’ It was odd how difficult it was to understand Kate, let alone believe her. The landscape of my dreams still filled my mind with another felt but unremembered reality, and it was long since I had allowed myself to think of our deliverance as probable, still less as imminent.

  ‘Sure and you’re still fuddled,’ Kate laughed. ‘Drink your tea and then you’ll feel more able to take things in.’ So I gulped the weak potion, while Kate watched me. When I put down the mug, she refilled it.

  ‘Well now, that’s better. The doctor’s say you needn’t go in today. There’s no need, so lie back and rest again.’

  ‘No, no!’ I protested. ‘I must go. Tell me all that has happened while I dress. We’ll never be relieved but the once, Kate, and can you really expect me to miss it while I rest?’ As I spoke, my own words brought the fact home to me and I jumped out of bed in a hurry to see what was happening.

  ‘Oh, Laura, they’re here! Thank God, thank God, they’re here! And I don’t mind admitting it now, but there’ve been times and a plenty when I felt in my old bones that we’d all of us die here! There’s the faith of a God-fearing Christian woman for you! But when we heard the guns yesterday afternoon, and then again this morning, we couldn’t believe our ears. Who in their senses would have thought that gunfire would one day be the sweetest sound our ears could hear? None of us would let ourselves believe it, mind, and Jessie even swore she couldn’t hear ’em, so that she wouldn’t be disappointed when they stopped.’

  Kate sniffed and wiped her eyes free of tears.

  ‘But such a night it’s been, wondering whether the guns would start again this morning, and then when they did, they seemed to be farther away again and I nearly died, I’m telling you truly. I nearly died. But now … I should have let you sleep on, but oh, my dear, we’ve shared so much, it was the wish to share this too that made me wake you, for now there can be no doubt. They’re here. Close to us. Close!’

  ‘They must be in the city then?’

  ‘Fighting through the city, and may God guard the poor lads in those narrow streets. ’Twas madness to come that way, but come they have.’

  I believed Kate now, but full realization evaded me until I walked into the steamy midday heat and experienced for myself the electric sense of anticipation that animated the whole entrenchment.

  The men were at their accustomed posts, crouched behind abutments and under the lee of the walls, scarecrow figures in ragged oddments of clothing, rake-thin, often hatless, but armed still, and there was something in the set of heads and shoulders that spoke of the crazy jubilation each must have felt. The enemy still fired in on us, but desultorily, as though they were looking over their shoulders. No one regarded the fire. As Kate and I walked down to the hospital, I realized that everyone with legs to stand on had come out into the open air. Men who normally would have been snatching rest between their duties stood about chewing on empty pipestems, jesting among themselves, and groups of women and children, pale from three months spent indoors, stood on verandahs blinking into the sunshine, hands cupped to ears for the sound of Havelock’s guns. The guns were there too, and, not far away, the steady chatter of musketry and rifle fire, often overlaid by the deep belch of a big gun, though whether these were the pandies’ or the relievers’ none could say.

  As Kate and I entered the hospital, a shout went up from a lookout. The natives were leaving the city. ‘Lines of ’em,’ the sentry yelled, ‘with bundles on their ’eads and nippers on their backs—over the Iron Bridge now, they’re pourin’ over it!’

  I shuddered as I thought of what must be taking place in the city. Who could blame anyone for leaving it? Those streets so narrow, always crowded, obstructed by booths, bedsteads and bullock-carts; livestock everywhere, the great bulls nuzzling imperturbably in the gutters. That was how I remembered it in peace. Now the ordinary people, the small tradesmen and artisans, the beggars, the cripples, the women with their multitudinous children were fleeing, leaving the streets as our troops forced their way through them and as, from every shuttered window, rooftop and high balcony, death rained down indiscriminately on soldier and civilian.

  The smelly semi-darkness of the hospital was more than ever a penance that afternoon. I longed to throw responsibility to the winds and rush up on to the walls to see for myself what was happening. Yet, armed with a dipper of water and my fan, I set about my accustomed duties, while Kate, Miss Birch and her sister-in-law helped the doctors to organize provisions and space for an added quota of wounded men. Our relief would be dearly bought.

  Before long, the newcomers’ guns could be heard even in the hospital. Those of our patients who could walk dragged themselves to the verandah and shouted each new item of information to their mates as they heard it, while their bed-bound comrades lay fretting on their cots and mats, swearing with irritation, and watching the door with anxious eyes. It was useless to try to soothe the excitement, so all I could do was relay the scraps of information as I heard them and scold the little Martinière schoolboys, jigging with anticipation and frustration, into their dull task of pulling the punkah ropes.

  When the shadows outside were lengthening, I sat down for a moment on a vacated cot to mop my face and take a drink of water. The man lying quietly in the next cot was unknown to me. He must have come in the previous day when I was sleeping off Dr Partridge’s draught, and I, too accustomed now to death, knew by looking at him that he was dying. His eyes were open and his hands lay still by his sides. When my gaze moved down his blanketed body I saw the abrupt termination of the contours of his limbs and realized, with familiar sick pity, that he had lost both legs.

  He must have seen the direction in which my eyes moved, and when I glanced back quickly at his dirty, unshaven face, he smiled faintly.

  ‘They’re too late for one of us anyway, miss,’ he whispered. ‘Just my blasted luck!’

  ‘You must not think that,’ I countered with instant hypocrisy, and reaching out covered one hand with my own. ‘You must have the will to live. That’s what helps, more than any doctor or physic and now … now with help so near there’ll be more surgeons, supplies. They’ll be able to do so much more for you than we could do for the others.’

  He shook his head slightly but continued to smile politely.

  ‘Sure, miss. I ’opes so. For the next lot. But me, well, miss, ’ow’s a man to make a livin’ with no legs? Pandies got one. Dr Darby took the other. Not much of a life left for a man, miss, not without no legs.’

  I was silent. Beneath the dirt and stubble on his face, I could discern the dazed tranquillity of shock. His resources were at an end. He sighed and closed his eyes. I wondered whether I should ask him whether he wanted a letter written to his family but, before I could speak, a sudden deafening cheer startled me to my feet. I retained my hold on the man’s limp hand, however, more, I believe, to placate my fear of my own death than to bring comfort to his dying, and so we remained in a tenuous and ephemeral human communion in the gloom of the long room as cheer followed cheer, each louder and more triumphant than the last. Every man, woman and child in the garrison must have
added to the uproar, except the dying man and myself, for even the wounded in their beds raised their voices. I heard the cheers; perhaps I even rejoiced in them. I do not know. All I remember is the feel of that cold, coarse-skinned hand in mine and the sensation of anguished inadequacy that filled me as Llewellyn Cadwallader rushed up to me with brilliant eyes and gasped, ‘I saw ’em, miss! We all saw ’em: coming up from the city and fightin’ all the way. They are really here, miss! Really here!’

  ‘Did you hear that?’ I whispered as Llew made off again. ‘The relief is here at last.’ I hoped to cheer him, I suppose.

  The man nodded with closed eyes, and I sat down again, clasping his hand now with both my own. After a few moments his lips moved in a whisper so low that I had to bend to catch his words. ‘Poor bastards,’ he said without rancour; and then again more softly still, ‘Poor bloody bastards.’

  He smiled very slightly, then his eyes flicked open and I caught an expression of immeasurable surprise. He drew in a deep breath of air; then his head moved gently to one side, the mouth still open, and he was dead.

  What followed is history. The books today call it the First Relief of Lucknow. For us that day it was simply ‘the Relief’.

  As Llewellyn sped from one end of the room to the other, telling of what he had seen, the noise outside increased to a pitch that was near frenzy and the clamour around me swelled as the sick cheered and whooped and banged tin cups against tin plates, and clapped and called to each other, and sent their leechtins, caps and long-cold pipes spinning to the ceiling in a delirium of joy. No one tried to quieten them; the two doctors stood with great grins on their tired faces and the Birch girls and Kate hugged each other and cried and hugged each other again.