Ryman, Rebecca

by Olivia

  Not one of them stopped to look back.

  In silence Olivia and Jai sat and watched the final rituals of Dassera, the longboat still, the oarsmen immobile save for lips mouthing silent mantras. Olivia dragged away her spellbound eyes to look at Raventhorne and, in the glare of the torches, found his instantly, for they were riveted to her face. In the pearl grey depths there was now a question, a question apparently of such vital importance that she recoiled instinctively; Jai Raventhorne was waiting for her to say something of extraordinary significance. What?

  Olivia swallowed and it was painful, for her throat felt dehydrated. "I have seen in Kumartuli the infinite care and devotion with which these images are fashioned." Was it this that he sought from her—approval and appreciation? "During the ten days that they are installed on altars, I know they are cherished and revered."

  "Go on!" he whispered, not yet satisfied, wanting more.

  Olivia licked her parched lips and stared, but all she could see on his face was a mask behind which there was another mask, behind which there was darkness. "Yet, when they discard the images they seem to do so carelessly, almost roughly, as if they meant nothing anymore. Not one of them looked back even once."

  "Ah!"

  He made a strange sound—part wail, part triumphal—something in between mortal torment and deliverance. At the same time his body, held in a frame of rigid tension, fell loose as if released from under some intolerable pressure. He moved, and with the shift in position his features blazed with the moonlight. A small cry arose in Olivia's throat but remained unborn as she congealed. His skin was suddenly like parchment, old and yellow, stretched across his cheek-bones in a lifeless expanse. But what produced in Olivia a new terror was the sight of his eyes, like empty sockets in a skull. For a moment she could only stare at the gaunt apparition who faced her, for it was that of a stranger she had never seen before.

  When he spoke again he had moved, so that the illusion was gone and his voice once more was measured. "That is the lesson of the immersions. They teach to love but to remain detached, to renounce when necessary and never to look back with regret."

  Olivia started to tremble. "But how can that be?" she breathed.

  "It can be, it must. But because there is no regret does not mean there is no pain." He was again gentle. "Watch!"

  Dutifully, her gaze pivoted back to the shore. Those who had completed their immersions—their renunciations!—had departed. The crowd had thinned considerably. But those who remained displayed expressions of racking grief, tears spilling down in glistening trails on dark cheeks, their eyes stricken with loss. Some cried quietly, their faces buried in their palms or in the shoulder of a companion; others mourned openly, their bodies contorted with anguish. The black waters of the Hooghly were now a battle-field littered with the remains of a hideous massacre. Arms, legs, painted and grinning faces floated past the longboat on their way to the eternity of the sea. Among the flotsam and jetsam were scraps of once beautiful clothing, tinsel crowns and armlets, glass bangles, beaded necklaces and, waving from guillotined heads, hanks of coarse black hair still entwined with flowers.

  Dust to dust, clay to clay.

  Olivia knew now beyond any reasonable doubt that something terrible was about to happen. In her stomach, tension knotted like a cramp and panic lay quivering just beneath the skin being warmed so efficiently by Jai's pashmina shawl of such exquisite artistry. Blinded by tears and the foreboding of tragedy, she asked, "Do you consider yourself a Hindu?" Aware of the futility of her question, she still refused to despair.

  "As much as I consider myself anything, I suppose."

  "And you too would be able to make such a renunciation without a backward glance?"

  "Yes." There was not even hesitation.

  "With no regrets?"

  "None."

  "Or . . . pain?"

  This time there was hesitation but only fractional. "No."

  Olivia's mind died. With each of his syllables she had hurtled farther and farther into an icy, airless space in which she was alone. The silence between them was sepulchral as, divided by their irreconcilable worlds, they drifted apart with not even the solace of a colliding glance. He stared through her and beyond her into vacancy; numbed by the enormity of what he had said, Olivia sat in glazed stupefaction. The polished disc of the moon was now behind the dipping fronds of the palm trees on its way below the horizon and toward other worlds. The longboat was again on the move on its return to the jetty. The shore receded behind them and with it the torches and the crowds and the chanting. Obeisance to the mother goddess Durga was over for another year and her devotees were dispersing. Olivia was not aware that with them she too was crying.

  At the jetty Bahadur waited with the carriage. The rest of the street was deserted. In their homes people slept soundly, neither knowing nor caring that outside their pleasant dreams there were knells of doom sounding for some. The night that had brought sleep to many had brought for others a curse of eternal sleeplessness. They disembarked and, expressionless, Raventhorne held open the door of the carriage for Olivia. Just fleetingly his fingers brushed hers but neither lingered nor returned.

  "I cannot see you again, Olivia."

  It was what he had been saying to her all night. Long before the words were enunciated they resounded and reverberated in Olivia's head like an echo knocking against a bowl of mountains. She knew now that it was what he had been saying to her each time they had met, right from the beginning. Her paralysed mouth formed the word why? but no sound came. Like his sentence of death, it too remained only an echo in her mind. Then she was inside the carriage being jolted away into a night that did not include him. She looked back, unheeding of the rules of a renunciation that had not been hers, but he was only a speck in the distance. Then, rubbed out by the dark, he was not even that.

  "Stop this carriage . . .!"

  The thunder of hooves swallowed Olivia's belated cry as she returned to life, savaged by a despair that was a tangible entity. Unable to grasp or accept the finality of a sentence as cruel and as undeserved as this, her mind did not have the strength to rebel yet. Instead, like the images, she started to disintegrate within herself; like the images, something loved was being discarded and left to dissolve in some alien sea. The injustice of it crippled Olivia's thinking powers, save for that one recurring and unanswered question.

  Why?

  She thought she was dead, or would be soon.

  There was a desert inside her mouth, arid and sandy. Her eyelids would not lift and when they did she was blinded by the dazzle. Within her head a maniac with a hammer drove nails into her skull. And there was fog, everywhere there was fog. Hidden in that fog there were voices, her aunt's, Estelle's, Dr. Humphries's. Some foul liquid was forced into her mouth; a cold compress was being pressed against her forehead and someone ordered her to sleep.

  Olivia slept.

  Weaving in and out of consciousness, she saw mirages—a play of colour and shape as in a kaleidoscope that made patterns and then fell apart to the roll of drums. There were also horrible nightmares, of graves and putrefying limbs and hideous painted faces, all skeletal in their finery, all with talons reaching out to trap her. Olivia screamed and thrashed to ward off the evil that was in the very air, and then out of the mist came a pearly cloak of security to enfold her in an embrace that was as soft as pashmina. She purred with contentment, nuzzling the warmth and the safety of arms. And then she slept again.

  "Feeling better, dear?"

  When she finally awakened to full consciousness, it was to a fine morning of milky autumn sunshine. Her aunt's face, creased with lines of worry, hovered above hers. The fever had broken. Olivia tried to sit up but, weakened beyond belief, she could not raise the effort. Her aunt's hand gently pushed her back among the pillows and made her sip warm milk through a spout.

  "Thank goodness! Dr. Humphries said it was the ague compounded by a terrible chill." Lady Bridget dabbed her mouth with a napkin. "But the
fever has run its course, praise be. We'll soon have you up and about again, you'll see. The secret is plenty of liquids, he said, plenty."

  Olivia nodded, sipped and felt marginally stronger. Behind her aunt Estelle hovered waiting for the empty invalid cup, her gaze circling the room as if to avoid her cousin's. Something tugged at the tails of Olivia's memory; she tried but she could not catch it. Like bricks, drowsiness pressed down over her eyelids. She could scarcely keep them open. Fatigue made it impossible to string together any intelligible thought except one.

  She was not to see Jai Raventhorne again.

  Her afternoon siesta was fitful but long. She opened her eyes to candle-light and the sounds of tinkling glass as the ayah rearranged the medicine table by the bed. More liquids followed, this time brought up by Sir Joshua, and the pleasing aroma of lemon-grass tea made a welcome change from that of chest liniments.

  "Well, how do you feel, m'dear?" He settled down by the bed.

  "Better, thank you." Olivia's voice, thin and reedy, seemed not her own. She struggled up against a supportive bank of pillows.

  "Capital, capital! Humphries was right. This new bark from Malaya seems to be the answer. They call it cinchona—about damned time someone did something about this confounded ague." He patted her hand. "We had some anxious moments about you, my dear. It's good to see colour in those cheeks again." There seemed to be plenty of colour in Sir Joshua's own cheeks as he chatted amiably, temper bubbling and buoyant. Licking his whiskers like a cat after he had drained his own cup, he waggled a warning finger at her. "No more early morning rides for you, my girl. At least not until some of that strength is recovered." Whistling tunelessly, he sauntered out of the room.

  No. No more early morning rides. There was no point in them now.

  The next morning Olivia was declared well enough by Dr. Humphries to be sponged and given fresh clothing. The morning after that he even allowed her an hour in the garden, bundled like an Egyptian mummy in shawls and mitts and woollen stockings. It surprised Olivia that her body could feel so strong again when her mind remained extinct. In a way she bitterly mourned the passing of her fever; while it had ravaged her body, there had been at least no need for thought.

  With Olivia's recovery now confirmed, Lady Bridget decided to venture out for an afternoon to attend a furniture auction. "It's at the home of the Armenians, dear, who run the races every week. They're off to London and they do have some good saddles Josh wants me to look at. Also, some Chippendale chairs and almost new English curtains. I really must do something about Estelle's room. It looks deplorable."

  Estelle! Olivia's memory clarified with a jolt and she filled with remorse. "Where is Estelle, Aunt Bridget? I haven't seen her around these past two days." How remiss of her to have forgotten her cousin so completely!

  "She's gone to the Pringles' in Cossipore for a week. You remember that nice naval lieutenant at the Pennworthys? Well, his sister Anne is down from Lucknow with her two children. Estelle has taken quite a shine to her and I'm so relieved. Anne is just the right kind of friend for that girl." Lady Bridget looked anxious. "You don't mind Estelle having gone, dear, do you? You were so much better and Estelle has been such a little paragon lately that—"

  "No, of course I don't mind ... a paragon, did you say?" Olivia wondered if she had been hearing right.

  Lady Bridget's smile was more expansive than Olivia had seen in weeks. "Quite a paragon, believe it or not! She even took Josh's dressing down about that ridiculous pantomime in her stride. As meek as a lamb, if you please. Not a word of protest."

  "Uncle Josh refused his permission?"

  "Well, of course he refused his permission!" Lady Bridget looked surprised. "Even if she hadn't caught him in the middle of this Kirtinagar business, Josh wouldn't have stood for it. But she's taken it well, astonishingly so. I can't say I'm not relieved the worst is over."

  Olivia almost asked what "this Kirtinagar business" might be but then remembered the reality and didn't. "I'm relieved too," she said slowly, the image of Estelle's ravaged face rising in her mind's eye for a moment. "I'm glad Estelle has been civil to you for a change."

  "She kissed me, you know." Lady Bridget's voice flickered. "She kissed me before she went off, the first time in weeks. And she said she was sorry for all the grief she had given me." She paused, then cleared her throat and composed herself again. "Incidentally, dear," she bent down to lift the shawl off a chair, "I do think this is quite lovely, quite the nicest one I've seen in a long time. I know Estelle would absolutely adore one for Christmas. When you're well again perhaps we can send for the pedlar from whom you bought it. It's not only pashmina, it's one of those jam-e-wars from Kashmir. Exquisite! Did it cost a fortune?"

  Olivia pretended to be asleep.

  Energies regrouped, cobwebs cleared from the walls of her mind and the fever did not recur. There was no way now that Olivia could escape from herself. There was not even Estelle's monotonous chatter to keep away the questions, the introspections, the puzzlement. And the pain. Why had Jai cast her off with such little warning?

  Sitting for hours in the garden while her aunt was either busy or out visiting, Olivia remained balanced on the knife-edge of torment such as she had never known. The pain chipped constantly at her heart, paring it down to a knot that would not stop bleeding. Yet she recognised that in all and equal honesty, she had no excuse for surprise. Jai had never wanted her love; she had thrust it upon him regardless. He had often avoided meeting her; she had pursued him till he had capitulated. He had warned her frequently. It was she who had made light of it. Those few scraps of emotion he had tossed at her, those reluctant kisses and restrained caresses, it was she who had made into mountains what were essentially only pebbles. No, he had not discarded her; he had never accepted her at all!

  But reasons and causes, however logical, do not lessen suffering. With each passing moment Olivia's anguish compounded. If there was any thread of light in the blackness of her despair, any hope in a jungle of hopelessness, it was one to which she clung tenaciously. Whatever Jai's motives, however bitter the taste of his renunciation, however small his capacity to receive and return love—he did love her. He could scorn and scoff and deny as much as he chose, but in some cloistered corner of that rock he had for a heart, Olivia was passionately convinced that he carried shared pain. And there was that affinity! That he could never refute, nor would she ever let him.

  In the meanwhile, the pain had to be borne, the aching separation tolerated, the sense of despair rebuffed. She knew she would see Jai Raventhorne again; no divinity fashioning their ends would dare deny her at least that.

  The garden fragrances were strong and heady. Abstractedly, Olivia inhaled the scent of freshly mown grass, of river breezes, of the abundance of nature. With winter near, the garden exploded with new life and cold weather finery: double hibiscus, dahlias and chrysanthemums as large as fruit bowls; pink, white and magenta bougainvillea now returned to blossom after their heavy leafing from the rains; saffron marigolds, sweet peas, snapdragons and gladioli. Among the profusion a pair of bulbuls daintily gathered twigs with much debate; a wedge-shaped flight of parrots looped shrilly around a banana grove and a solitary kingfisher sat hunched on a pole, seeming to meditate. The blue Vanda orchid flourished. As it peeped at Olivia from behind a branch, it seemed to snigger with some private joke.

  A carriage swept noisily through the gate and up the drive. Even before it reached the portico, Sir Joshua leapt forth from it. Waving extravagantly in Olivia's direction, he bounded across the lawn towards her.

  "Koi hai?" His roar brought Rehman hurrying out of the kitchen house. "A drink, you moth-eaten rascal, a strong drink, juldee, juldee, or you'll have a taste of my crop across your idle backside, you black son of a whore!" He sat down heavily, almost upsetting the tea table in the act, and turned to Olivia. "As good as new I see, huh? Shabash, splendid! Now, that's what I like to see in you young chits, as many roses in the cheeks as in the garden, no?" He
slashed recklessly at a nearby bush and guffawed.

  Olivia stared at him in astonishment. His behaviour was extraordinary, so out of character! "Are you not feeling well, Uncle Josh? Somehow, you seem . . . not to be yourself today."

  "Not myself today?" He grappled with the concept, then, unable to grasp it, shrugged and gave up the effort. Putting his head between his hands he groaned and cursed volubly. "The clap-riddled, horse dung-brained son of a two-anna harlot—I told the god-rotting jackass that nothing these bloody natives do is ever simple . . . " His mouth dripped saliva and his speech was thickly slurred.

  "Who, Uncle Josh, and do what?" Olivia was bewildered.

  "Eh? Who . . . what?" Dazed again, he stared at her blankly. Then his face darkened again as he looked around for Rehman. "Where's my bloody drink, you misbegotten bastard? Can't you move your black butt faster?" Picking up a saucer he flung it at the terrified bearer as he approached. Rehman dumped the tray onto the table and fled. Sir Joshua half rose, as if to give chase, then slumped again cursing under his breath. "No risk, the man said, no bloody risk . . . hah!" Pouring himself a double measure, he downed it in a gargantuan gulp.