Zemindar

by Valerie Fitzgerald

  The atmosphere between us changed. I half guessed what was coming and wished it would not.

  ‘I cannot suppose you were ever aware of it, but there was a time, a long time ago now, of course, when I almost allowed myself to hope that I might be lucky enough to influence your affection toward myself.’

  ‘Mr Roberts …’

  ‘No! I would like to say it all this once, and then go away and never mention it more. Of course, it would not have been an ideal match for you because of the disparity in our ages, and I realized that fully. But I found in your company, in your character, so much ease and contentment that I hoped you felt some of the same in mine. I knew it was unlikely that you could love a man so much your senior in years with any great passion, but a good understanding between the parties, shared interests, like-mindedness, have often proved a sound basis for marriage. And you had given me to understand that your pecuniary situation was not of the soundest. I allowed … yes, I did allow myself to hope for your hand. At one time. Perhaps I should not be telling you this now, but you will not take offence. I want you to know that I was willing, most willing, to give you more than books and the fruits of my experience in India. In fact, Miss Laura, it is more than wanting to give.’ He paused, clenching his hands together. ‘I did give. I have given you my elderly heart, and in gratitude for so much that you gave me.’

  ‘I don’t know what to say,’ I said, which was true.

  ‘You need say nothing, my dear. It is enough that you have listened to me with kindness. I know you will not laugh at me or betray my confidence. I am glad you know, and … and I am also glad it is Mr Erskine who has won you. A formidable rival for me, was he not, Miss Laura,’ he asked with a brief attempt at levity, ‘but I believe he will make you a good husband. I hope you will be happy. Very happy.’

  Emily had been right. All those months ago, thoughtless, frivolous, unhappy Emily had guessed my friend’s secret, and I, busy as ever with every concern but my own, had missed the meaning in his interest.

  ‘Goodnight, Laura. Thank you for your patience. Have no fear, we will not need to refer to this again. I … I am most sincerely glad that you have found happiness; I hope it will endure for all your life.’

  We both stood up and he turned to go, while I tried to think of something suitable to say.

  ‘I almost forgot …’ He stopped on the top step and produced a book from his pocket. ‘I happened to come across this among my few remaining possessions. You know they commandeered my trunk of books, my three-drawer chest and almost everything else I owned to build into the walls—in July, when the rains came and everything was tumbling down?’

  ‘I remember you telling us. It was a shame!’ He had been disconsolate at the loss of his books, old and treasured friends that had accompanied him wherever he went.

  ‘Yes.’ He seemed to forget what he wanted to say, then saw the book in his hands and continued.

  ‘I came across it, and recalled your fondness for the Aurelian Emperor and the fact that you had been forced to abandon your own copy. I thought you might like to have it. As a memento of a friend? Please accept it.’

  He put into my hands a beautiful morocco-bound copy of Marcus Aurelius.

  ‘I would love to have it,’ I assured him soberly. ‘I have missed him all these months. I will treasure it for many reasons, but mostly to honour the donor. I will never abandon this copy, I promise you.’

  Mr Roberts smiled wanly, gazing at me through his spectacles.

  ‘Dear, kind Laura,’ he said, and walked slowly away with bent head, weariness evident in every line of his shabby figure.

  I entered our kitchen and sat down. Smoke from the small fire below the soup pot filled the room; otherwise it was empty. For no reason that I could name, I felt upset and alarmed.

  I half intended to tell Oliver what had occurred, but remembered my assurance that I would not betray Mr Roberts’s confidence; telling Oliver would do so. When he arrived, I merely said that Mr Roberts had visited me and was worried at some further rumours regarding General Outram’s intentions. I also showed him the book, delighting in the soft tooling of the binding. On opening it for the first time, I found that Mr Roberts had inscribed it:

  For Laura, with Affection and Gratitude.

  ‘The perfection of moral character

  consists in this: in passing every

  day as the last.’ M. Aurelius

  Henry M. Roberts November 1857

  ‘That’s so like him,’ I smiled, while Oliver read the inscription over my shoulder. ‘Exactly in keeping with his character.’

  ‘Is it? He doesn’t seem to put it into practice too well.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Opium is not usually the recourse of the philosophical, the self-sufficient.’

  ‘No, I see what you mean. He said just this evening that he seems to have lost the capacity to find comfort in books, studies and observation of life. He was rather sad, Oliver, and he made me sad for some reason too.’

  ‘A full belly is all any of us needs to cure us of melancholia! He’ll be right as rain as soon as we get out of here.’

  I laid down the book, found my shawl and followed Oliver out of doors for a walk. Kate was back from the hospital and Jessie had brought Pearl in to feed her. The wish for privacy often drove us out of doors, even when the weather was bad, and I sometimes wondered how our courtship would have progressed had Oliver, like Charles when he was engaged to Emily, been allowed to see me only in the presence of a third party. Not that we had the chance to stray very far along the path of impropriety; there were people everywhere, whatever the hour, and Mrs Bonner, who was usually sitting on her stretch of verandah with Minerva when we left, probably took great care in timing the length of our absence, always observed the direction we took and asked with interest where we had been. She had told Kate in accents of sorrow that she believed I had ‘une tendresse’ for my cousin-in-law, and Kate had enjoyed telling her there was no relationship and I was perfectly free to indulge my affections for Mr Erskine if I so pleased. ‘Oh, but I do hope it is merely a case of propinquity,’ Mrs Bonner had sighed. ‘Not a suitable match, Mrs Barry. Not suitable at all.’ After this, Oliver had made a point of winking at Minerva whenever he caught sight of her and now she started giggling even before he was in winking distance.

  The pandies’ band-concert was in full spate as we sauntered through the dusk to the Baillie Guard. Each evening rebel bandsmen on the far side of the wall would remind us of the comforts of former days by playing a selection of familiar airs such as Annie Laurie, The Flowers of the Forest, and Auld Lang Syne. Perhaps they hoped that the musical reminder of pleasant evenings with friends at the cantonment bandstand would serve to depress our spirits, but in fact they were listened to with enjoyment, and even the final impudence of God Save the Queen provoked only laughter.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ Oliver announced as we walked, ‘I am to go down the mines. A listening-post, I believe, is what I am to be entrusted with. It should be interesting.’

  ‘Oh, Oliver, no!’ I was aghast. ‘You are not well enough yet, and your arm …’

  ‘I’m as strong as I am ever going to be without a decent meal. It is something I can do, and will relieve the monotony of pouring bullets; believe me, that can become very monotonous. As to my arm—I can hold a pistol in my left hand and at point-blank range—which it would be—even I am not likely to miss if I actually need to pull the trigger; though it seems from what I have heard that one is unlikely to come face to face with one of the others. That ginger-haired fellow, what’s-his-name—Kavanagh—he spends half his life underground lying in wait for pandies who never show up or, if they do, either argue with him or run for their own lines. I’ll be fine; Toddy has been giving me a short course of instruction as to what to expect.’

  ‘I do wish you wouldn’t. There are so many dangers … a fall of earth could be the end of you. But … if you’ve made up your mind, I don’t expect you’ll li
sten to me.’ He grinned and said nothing.

  ‘I know. I’m fussing. But I know something else too. You are going to be thoroughly uncomfortable and miserable down there. Much more so than you imagine; the mines unnerve the stoutest characters and I’ll be surprised if you venture down a second time.’

  ‘Perhaps you’re right. We’ll see. Meanwhile, let’s not talk of mines and martial matters. We’ve such a lot of things to talk about. All these months past I have been holding long, long conversations with you. Did you guess? In the strangest places and at the oddest times. They were the best I could do, but not very satisfactory. I suspect I too often gave you my opinions simply because I did not know yours, and we’ve had enough disagreements in the past for me to know there will be more to come.’

  ‘Indeed there will. We shall have a most contentious life, I fancy. I am very used to forming my own mind. I believe you may find it displeasing.’

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘Well, perhaps you have lived alone too long to learn how to deal with your own will thwarted. As it will be sometimes, naturally. And that will certainly displease you.’

  ‘Never—so long as you do the thwarting. Your slightest wish will ever be my command. You know that.’

  ‘Then don’t go down the mines!’

  ‘Ah! Conscience must take precedence even over your wishes. I’m afraid …’

  ‘There you are, you see …’

  ‘And surely you would not have me do less than Toddy-Bob or Charles or all the others to secure your safety?’

  I enjoyed the bantering tone of his voice, belied by the tender expression in his eyes, but knew I must be careful not to allow the conversation to edge into the dangerous territory of where these idyllic disputes would take place. To reassure myself, I twined my fingers in the fingers of his left hand safely hidden under the crimson quilt he was wearing. It was difficult not to enlarge upon my dream plans for our life together; but, nervous of what his intentions might be, I preferred not to rock the barque of my frail happiness.

  On the verandah of the Fayrers’ house the ladies were singing hymns with a group of off-duty gentlemen from their battery. I caught a glimpse of Charles’s fair head and waved but he did not see me, so earnestly was he carolling with a hymn book held before his face.

  We walked down the slope to the Baillie Guard and across the open space beyond it.

  ‘The final touch!’ Oliver chuckled as we went. ‘A pandy band playing “The Queen”, guns firing, and ladies singing hymns amid it all!’ And suddenly I was laughing too.

  Each time I viewed our meagre fortifications from outside as the pandies must have seen them, my astonishment at my own safety grew more pronounced. Tumbled, frail, battered before completed, the wall of brickwork, mud, firewood, bamboo and sacking stretched in an often interrupted arc surrounding, but hardly protecting, the ruined buildings I now knew so well.

  ‘Crazy!’ Oliver said, as together we paused. ‘Crazy. I always said the place could not be defended.’

  ‘But it was defended. It is being defended. Oliver, how can you! We are entering the fifth month of the defence and you still say it cannot be done.’

  ‘Why the devil didn’t they get on with it?’ he demanded of the evening air as we turned back towards the old gate. ‘There was nothing to stop them. Nothing.’

  ‘You sound regretful that they never had the fortitude to make the final push that would have meant our end. I believe your loyalties really are as ambivalent as rumour has it!’

  ‘Hmph! Perhaps. Though I incline more to the belief that I am as Ungud is, as Ishmial is, as the pandies should be. I am loyal to my nimcha, my “salt”. In other words, to the hand that feeds me, though in my case it would be more correct to say to the land that feeds me. Hassanganj.’

  A sharp chill made itself felt around my heart, so I began talking nonsense.

  ‘Would you be pleased if the pandies win? I mean over all?’

  ‘Don’t be foolish, you know quite well they can’t win—over all or any other way. And no, I would not want them to if they could. They would not have the capacity, at this time, to manage their own affairs, their own country, or what we have made of their country over the last hundred years. But I see an old order dying. High time it went too, in some ways. But much that was good, estimable, and to be emulated as I think, will also die. That I must necessarily regret.’

  ‘Oliver, don’t you hate them? At all? For what they have done to you, to Hassanganj? To all of us here—and in Cawnpore?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You surely cannot still find any justification for their behaviour? It has been appalling.’

  ‘I can understand it. In some respects I even sympathize with it. War is appalling, Laura. On both sides. Always. Our own record is not blameless, remember, and in any event hatred destroys the hater more efficiently than the hated. Your friend Marcus Aurelius has something to say on that point—and by the way, I did not know you were an admirer of his; you see how little I know of you?’

  ‘Oh, yes. He’s been my greatest comfort for years, but I left my old copy in Wajid Khan’s house, which is why Mr Roberts gave me his. But I cannot recall anything about hatred explicitly.’

  ‘No, not explicitly. But he says, somewhere, “The best way of avenging thyself is not to become like the wrongdoer,” Do you hate the pandies, Laura?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. But I … I am repelled by what they have done, and frightened of it. You will say because I do not understand, and perhaps you are right. But they are human, after all, and surely one should expect some sort of human behaviour … standards … even though they are not of our race.’

  He was silent and I continued, ‘I think it is terrible to be confronted with such … such loathing, such vicious hatred. To have to live among people capable of it …’ Again on dangerous ground, I fell silent.

  Oliver sighed and said seriously, ‘You are right. The bitterness of this is going to last a long time. A very long time. Yet we have earned it too. We must not forget that, nor allow it to be said of us again.’

  The chill around my heart increased, and I turned to him, took his hand and said, ‘I love you so much. So much!’

  As we approached the Gaol, we saw several people crowding around our door looking into the kitchen: Mrs Bonner and her stout husband and young Minerva, two or three other neighbours, a couple of officers. Immediately anxious, I hurried up the steps. They made way for us without speaking.

  ‘What’s happened?’ I demanded urgently. ‘Is something wrong with Pearl?’ But I was at once reassured as Jessie stood with Pearl in her arms, the baby pulling at Jessie’s deep red hair with every appearance of good health and spirits.

  ‘Oh, Laura, thank God! Charles has gone out to look for you. We didn’t want you to hear from strangers …’

  ‘What is it, Kate?’ said Oliver, as I stood in silence wondering what could be wrong in my world since all the people I loved were present and well.

  Intent upon the baby, I only then saw Wallace Avery sitting on one of the cane stools at the back of the room, his head in his hands.

  ‘It’s … oh, Laura dear, it’s poor Mr Roberts!’ said Kate.

  ‘Killed?’ asked Oliver as I waited.

  Kate shook her head.

  ‘Hurt then?’

  ‘He has shot himself. He is dead.’

  ‘No! Oh no, Kate! He was here …’

  ‘I … I found him.’ Wallace looked up. His face was white, his eyes blotched and red with drink and tears. ‘My God! Why the hell did I have to find him? It was frightful … frightful.’ And he began to sniff and blubber like a frightened child.

  Oliver took three strides across the room to where the bottle of brandy that Wallace himself had given us stood on a shelf. He reached for a cup and poured out a tot. ‘Here, man, drink this,’ he ordered with a touch of the old impatience. Wallace complied noisily, then put the cup down and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘That’s better
,’ he said. ‘And, my God, when I remember that I had gone to him to ask for a drink … and he was there … finished, all the time I was searching around his bedroom!’

  ‘Wallace, when did it happen?’ I whispered.

  ‘I don’t know. But not long ago. Couldn’t have been.’

  ‘No. He was here only a couple of hours since.’

  ‘Was he? Well, there you are, you see. I … I had got in from a spell on the guns at the South Face. Not much doing actually, but tedious, d’you know, and I’d been there since midday. Needed a drink to … to help me ease up, and I found my bottle was empty. Knew old Roberts had a couple of bottles under his bed. Usen’t to drink much, not generally, but just lately he had been findin’ it more of a comfort like the rest of us. So—well, I trotted down the verandah to his room but he wasn’t there. Door was open, of course, so I thought, knowing him, well, he wouldn’t mind if I took just a tot or two before asking him. I found a cup, but not the bottles. No furniture, y’know; just a trunk and a string bed left in the place. I felt under the pillows and looked underneath the bed, but there was nothing. Then I remembered. ‘He’s—he was—a neat sort of chap, very tidy, and he kept a lot of things on the shelves in the bathroom, since there was no table or anything in the bedroom. So … so I went in and found him. God! Poor old Roberts!’

  Tears sprang to his protruberant eyes again and he passed a podgy hand over his face to control himself.

  ‘He … he … It must have been hell, trying to screw himself up to the pitch, d’you know. There was a glass, still with a little brandy in it, on the floor beside the bottle. He was very particular, you know, Laura? Very tidy … and liked everything in its place about him. He must have … I suppose he hadn’t wanted to make a … a mess everywhere. He’d got into the tin tub and … and sat down in it—it was empty, of course—in all his clothes and with his boots on. And then … and then he’d put a pistol in his mouth. There were … there were brains and bone and hair all over the wall … and, oh God! Sickening, it was sickening to see poor old Roberts like that. He did … no one … any harm.’