‘A willingness to call a spade a spade?’
‘And an ability to turn off the conscience when it interferes with comfort.’
‘Quite!’ Kate laughed.
‘Anyway,’ I had to admit, ‘if Oliver says it is right, it will be right—for Tod and Ishmial.’
‘But not for you?’ There was a sly note in Kate’s voice. I looked down at the untended hands lying on my stained and threadbare skirt. We knew each other too well now for dissimulation, but I made no reply.
‘He’s the man for you, woman dear,’ she said. ‘Surely you see it now?’
‘Perhaps. But … there are difficulties.’
‘Whenever were there not? But difficulties are made to be overcome.’
I sighed and watched the monkeys cavorting on the rooftop.
‘Sure, when he first came “in” it was obvious how both of you felt. I thought it would be plain sailing. He’s alive. You’re free. And it isn’t still Charles who holds your fancy, that I do know.’
‘Was it ever?’ I wondered.
‘Ah, yes—when you first arrived in Lucknow. And even later, in Hassanganj. But then, when Oliver began to put himself out to be pleasant and agreeable, I observed a change. I expect you thought it was all for Emily, as I did at first, but I soon realized that the happier he could keep Emily, the easier she was for you to deal with, and the more readily you could leave her in order to spend time with himself in the library, or riding around the estate, and so on. Very clever, he was; cunning.’
‘He was good to poor Emily. She had begun to love him, I believe.’
‘Well, sure and that would be no surprise. She needed love, that girl, like a dog needs a pat; may her soul rest in peace. But he—well, Oliver never had eyes for her.’
It was a relief to know my secret was shared, and being in love, there was joy even in speaking of Oliver, so I did not change the subject.
‘And you,’ Kate went on, ‘I thought at first had eyes for no one but Charles. Oliver must have seen it too, and very exasperating he found it, I’m sure. But before long I realized that, whether you knew it or not, there was a sort of … understanding between the two of you. Can’t guess how he contrived it, but there it was; and often when the two of you were talking, the rest of us were shut out completely, and I would get the impression that what you said was not what you were talking about at all.’
‘You’re too shrewd, Kate,’ I answered. ‘Far shrewder than I was, for I never guessed his regard until we were making our way here through all those horrors. And then he had to tell me!’
‘Bless me! And you so intelligent and learned. Ah, well! But don’t tell me you turned him down?’
‘At the time. I reconsidered.’
‘Then what are the difficulties?’
‘Perhaps there are none really. Perhaps I am anticipating what will not, or cannot, happen. After all, however much he may want to return to Hassanganj, there is not much chance that he will be able to do so. Not with all the changes that are bound to come when this is over.’
‘You mean you want him, but in England?’
I nodded.
‘That’s a tall order you’re placing, Laura, and a hard choice you’re giving him. ’Tis his life, Hassanganj.’
‘But, Kate, Hassanganj is gone. He must reconcile himself to that, surely? He’ll never be allowed to run that place again like a … a private kingdom, as Emily used to say. He will have to make other plans, find another life, come home to England and settle down like everyone else.’
The bright blue eyes regarded me doubtfully.
‘’Tis a big stick you are making to beat yourself with. Is it only living in India that is your difficulty? Or do you not truly love him, after all?’
Tears sprang to my eyes and I averted my head as I whispered, ‘I do love him, most dreadfully. But I could not live out here now, Kate. I cannot.’
‘Well, it’s not I that will blame you for feeling so, but I believe in time, quite a short time probably, things will get back to normal. We know so little of what has happened, of course, but …’
‘But I will not get back to “normal”,’ I interposed. ‘I will never forget.’
‘Even though, when things have been settled, living in India will be easier for us all, more comfortable, and certainly much safer? The Government …’
‘Perhaps,’ I broke in again, unwilling to be persuaded. ‘But I want no part of it. I only want to get home and know that the people around me are my own people, speaking my own language, thinking along the lines I have been taught to think. I want to lie down at night knowing there is little chance of the house taking fire and none at all that my neighbours will be shot and killed.’
‘And who would blame you for that, indeed? But don’t be too hasty. Think well. Give yourself time, don’t you see?’
‘It’s the insecurity, Kate. I’d never for a moment feel truly safe here. I just want to go Home now. Home.’
‘Perhaps that will be the best thing. Time works wonders, and he’d wait. He’s a contrary divil, mind, as I’ve often remarked, but not a fickle one, I think. If his mind is set on you, he’ll wait.’
I could only shake my head again, for rare tears were troubling me.
‘Ah, the pity of the way Fate works things out for us all,’ Kate went on with a deep sigh. ‘Here am I, loath to leave India, but with nothing to keep me here, and you, with so much reason to stay, wanting to go. All my old bones seize up with rheumatism at the very thought of leaving the sun and the heat and the big dark bungalows in shady gardens, and all the jollities in the cold weather, and the young men who have counted me a friend over the years—my boys. When I think of the bleak skies and the cold grey seas of Home, and of damp people hurrying down slushy streets, and all the poor creatures like me growing old with their hearts in India and their feet on a stranger’s hearth …’
‘It need not be like that.’
‘For me, it will be. India caught me young. I love it. Here’s where my life’s been, my memories. Here’s where my dead man’s bones are—somewhere,’ she added, blinking her blue eyes very quickly. ‘I belong here, still, despite everything.’
For a moment we were silent with our thoughts.
‘That is how I would have to feel if I were to stay,’ I acknowledged. ‘There was a time when, perhaps, I could have. I was so interested in everything out here; so curious and so anxious to like and understand it. I tried to learn everything I could, everything Oliver wanted to teach me. But India herself has taught me more than I wanted to know. And the wrong things.’
In our kitchen Jessie banged a spoon on a pan to call us to the meal.
‘Laura?’
‘Yes?’
‘Think well. Don’t let him go. To be sure, he’ll pipe you a merry dance; he’s headstrong and so are you, and there’ll be many a time when you’ll disagree and worse. But difficult as he is, he’s the man for you. There won’t be two like him!’
‘I know,’ I agreed sadly. ‘I know.’
CHAPTER 10
I would not let my mind dwell on the choice that I might have to make. I had learned that it is wisest to live in the day for the day. Much might yet happen to obviate the necessity for any choosing on my part, and I was young, in love and recently freed from a terrible fear. So I would not think but laughed and sang, and found everyone around me suddenly and unaccountably lovable.
Each day as the quick dusk closed around us, I could look forward to hearing a certain step on the verandah’s flags and would hold myself in readiness for a stroll through the inner, safer environs of the entrenchment, or a long softly-spoken talk as we sat on the steps under the chilly new stars with his one arm around my shoulders. My first thought in the morning was to count the hours until I saw him, and often I was too impatient to wait until dusk but would saunter past the hospital to the Baillie Guard and stand looking out between the tall, singed doors as though only the new freedom of this larger vista held my attention. But
just to my left, as I watched the morning’s work progressing before me, was the battered Treasury building where now Oliver and others, with much ribaldry and laughter, heated lead and filled the moulds for the Lee Enfield bullets, and there was always a chance that I might be glimpsed by him in the course of my early walk. I was, of course, very surprised to find Oliver was already at work, and he would be astonished to find me on my way to the hospital so early. He would walk a few paces of my way with me, enquiring solicitously of the welfare of my ‘family’ until we were out of earshot, then perhaps reduce me to giggles by addressing me as his Nur Jehan, his Light of the World, or his Dil ki Aziz, his Heart’s Sweetness. If the morning were very blue and gold-limned like an illumination from a Book of Hours, he might recite a few lines from the Urdu poet Ghalib, or a short rhymed poem called a ghazal, which, though flattering, was not altogether satisfactory. My Urdu was not up to the high-flown stanzas and, knowing Oliver, I guessed his recitation might just as well have been a lampoon on the unfortunate rotundity of some dead Mohammedan worthy of Lucknow as a paean to my youth or loveliness.
The mornings were now cold enough to require the protection of a coat or cloak, but he owned none and we had nothing suitable to lend him. Eventually Toddy-Bob ‘came by’ a splendid native bedcover of quilted crimson satin in one of the palaces, and this his master was content to wear, with a hole cut in the middle for his head and hanging over his shoulders, much like the garb of some South American natives.
After a few moments, when my day, my life, my world were all offered up and returned to me exalted in the light of two direct amber eyes, he would bow politely and I would climb the slope, humming with happiness, to my hours among the sick.
Sometimes I was ashamed of this happiness, for it kept me from entering fully into the sufferings of those around me. I did my best, and I hope without impatience, but it is difficult truly to sympathize with another’s misery when one’s personal reality is all unbounded joy. I knew enough of life not to wish myself less happy, however, and always at the back of my mind was the nagging awareness that I might have to make a choice that would end my joy.
Once again our rations were cut. Now there was no point in trudging up the hill to the Gaol for a midday meal. I contented myself with dry chapattis carried in my pocket, and left the hospital a little earlier in consequence. In the hospital, as soon as a man was capable of thought, he thought of food. So did we all. It was a constant topic of conversation with everyone, and when Jessie leaned her head against the wall with closed eyes to ‘tak’ a spell’ from her knitting, or Kate’s blue gaze grew faraway and misty with longing, I knew it was not their loved ones they were thinking of but legs of mutton, Devonshire cream, gooseberry tarts and hot scones soaked with butter. Often I woke in the morning on the point of tears because my waking dream had been of a bountiful meal which consciousness had kept me from tasting.
Day by day and for all our efforts, we grew dirtier and more unkempt. Gram flour made a poor substitute for soap for washing ourselves, and our clothing we could only rinse out in clear water. Vermin troubled the sick almost as much as wounds and disease, and I took to wearing a species of turban over my short hair to protect myself further from infestation. The boys of the Martinière were a sorrow to behold: ragged, their rags filthy, barefoot often, with uncut hair and pale bony faces they scampered about the entrenchment like a pack of mangy monkeys, shivering with cold. At my request Toddy made it his business to acquire some more native quilts which he halved and handed out to the boys who helped in the hospital.
When Mr Roberts appeared in our quarters one evening looking almost as slovenly as the boys, I knew we must be nearing the end of our endurance. He had brought me a gift— and, of course, information.
‘I am told, and on the best of authority,’ he started, with an attempt at his old didactic manner, ‘that General Outram is actually advising Brigadier Greathed and his Delhi column to meet and finish off a band of insurgents said to be making their way to Cawnpore before making any attempt to relieve us. Can you believe such stupidity, Miss Laura, such depravity, I might almost say? We are his first and most pressing responsibility and he motions away the only succour we can expect. He is jeopardizing the life of every one of us for some stupid … military tactical fancy. Nothing more!’
‘Come now, Mr Roberts, I believe they are doing their best for us,’ I replied.
‘But does he not see that the longer we remain here, the weaker we all become? By the time any relief does at last appear, we shall not be able to stagger out of the Baillie Guard but will have to be carried out in litters—every last one of us.’
‘Perhaps. But I have decided to take the easier course of hoping for the best. It’s less wearing on the nerves to cultivate optimism than anticipate disaster, is it not?’
Mr Roberts made no reply. His dove-grey alpaca jacket was ridged with grease round the collar and on the lapels. His shirt (dyed, like all shirts by that time, in curry-powder or ink) was frayed and dirty; even his hands were ingrained with grime. He fidgeted all the time he talked, scratching at a hole in the knee of his trousers, rubbing the tip of his nose, fingering his lips with his dirty fingers, pulling at his beard, shuffling his feet.
We were sitting on the steps of the inner courtyard, catching the last of the sun; on the same steps where once I had sat and watched the sad pyre of Emily’s stained possessions take fire in the July heat. The tree in the centre of the courtyard still stood, though most of its branches had been taken for fuel, and the squirrels—they too were thinner now and less sleek—scampered busily up and down the bole and on the broken earth below it. I remembered that July evening, but as though another had lived through it, not I. I recalled the shimmering heat rising into the almost equal heat that did not shimmer; the squirrels, the goat with its enquiring yellow eyes and the children playing with their homemade wagon. I remembered my prayer that I had made in such a strange mixture of despair and confidence: ‘God send him back to me—for me!’ but now that Oliver had indeed come back to me the need for that prayer and its fervour were hard to imagine.
‘You have the advantage of youth, dear Laura,’ Mr Roberts said after a long pause. ‘That is why philosophy is still possible for you. I wish I could emulate your stout heart and unbowed will. But …’ His hand strayed to his face, picking at the stubble on his ill-shaved cheeks, then wandered down to the small beard, now ragged and perceptibly more white than I remembered it. ‘But for me … I cannot explain it. I can no longer find comfort in my thoughts. In resolutions. In history … nor even books. I find myself bereft of all the tools with which to build up fortitude.’
His eyes, behind the spectacles, had a lost expression and filled with tears as he ended. He straightened his collar self-consciously.
I put my hand on his knee. ‘Dear Mr Roberts, bear up! Don’t give way now. We are nearly at the end of it, after all. I don’t care what plans or instructions General Outram has, we know now that help, real help, is on its way to us from Delhi. It will be here within days; everyone says so. They cannot be longer than a couple of weeks at most and perhaps not that long. All the world knows our situation now; they will not let us endure this for one moment longer than is necessary. Remember, we are in touch with the outside now. Messages come and go every day. Your alarm is needless, but I do understand it. It’s due to the long effort you have made; and discouragement and apathy always accompany not having enough to eat. You know that. Oh, dear Mr Roberts, don’t give way now; you mustn’t!’
He drew himself upright on the hard step and for a moment I caught a glimpse of my old mentor, contained, pedantic, precise.
‘No, no, I am not really giving way. It has become rare for us to exchange such moments of sympathy. There are very few to whom I can express myself as fully and as confidently as I can to you, Miss Laura. The self-indulgence of expression weakened me, but momentarily, I do assure you, only momentarily.’
‘I know. We all need a shoulder to cry on
sometimes.’
Again silence fell between us, and my mind immediately deserted the matter at hand, genuine as was my sympathy for Mr Roberts, and flew to Oliver. Soon he would be coming. Usually I waited for him on the front verandah, but today I would let his coming be a surprise.
‘We have—I think I may say, Miss Laura, that we have found comfort in each other’s company in some strange and diverse situations?’
‘Indeed you may, Mr Roberts. Great comfort.’
‘My mind is inclined to be a little woolly these days. I hope it is not too apparent, but I do find it difficult to drag my thoughts together. The hunger, I suppose. But one thing never eludes me: my admiration for your character.’
‘Come now, you mustn’t flatter a poor girl!’
‘No, indeed no. No flattery there, merely the plain truth. All through this … unpleasing military exercise, you have been a tower of strength to those who have known you. I have often wondered how one so young could be so equable, so unsurprised and unfrightened in the face of all our evils. It is not due solely to a good brain, nor the resilience of youth, nor to a disciplined character. It has often puzzled me, that well-spring of strength on which you have drawn since entering the Residency. Now I think I have found the fount of your steadfastness. You are in love, are you not, Laura? With Oliver Erskine?’
As with Kate, so now I saw no need to prevaricate with my old friend. I nodded, smiling—no doubt foolishly.
‘I am.’
‘And he reciprocates your regard, I trust?’
‘I believe so.’
I waited for him to felicitate me, express his delight at my happiness.
But instead he subsided into himself again, and plucked anew at the hole on his knee.
‘The last strand has given,’ he said, so softly and strangely I hardly heard, and thought I must have misheard him.
‘I am pleased,’ he then said in a more normal tone. ‘I am glad that your happiness is assured. Or rather … Miss Laura, I am trying to be glad!’
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