Ryman, Rebecca

by Olivia

  "Shut up, Barney." There was no heat in Sir Joshua's order, only irritation. "Stay well out of this."

  "Stay out?" Slocum went scarlet and started to splutter. "Now, look here, Josh, enough is en—"

  "If you don't step aside, Barney, I promise you will get hurt."

  "Good God, man, this is a civilised gathering. You can't carry on here like some blasted highway hooligan!" The bright red face turned purple. "As an officer of the law, in the name of Her Gracious Majesty, I forbid it, I absolutely and categorically forb—"

  "Do stop blithering, Barney! This is not your business, even less Her Gracious Majesty's." He raised the barrel of the Colt and aimed it squarely at Slocum's bulging paunch. "Now get out of the way unless you want to be rid of that beer belly in a hurry."

  A shrill, nervous giggle sounded in some far corner but was instantly throttled. Already red veined with an excess of champagne, Slocum's eyes shot open wide in alarm. He blinked, gulped a few times with an astonished orifice opening and shutting like that of a gasping fish, then hastily opted for discretion over valour. Cursing under his breath, he retreated and melted once more into the crowd, duty done. Nobody else even considered intervention, and with good reason. If Raventhorne was damn fool enough to meet his Maker with such arrogant dispatch, then who were they to stop him? In any case, it couldn't happen to a more deserving man.

  "One."

  Rumbling comments sliced off sharply as Sir Joshua began his count. Paralysed into immobility, Olivia finally stirred but as if in a dream. She felt she was under water, her limbs pressing down with heaviness as she floated in and out of herself far away from her coherent mind. "Stop him, please ..." The mouth that moved was hers but the voice was somebody else's.

  "No." Ransome's skin was ash grey, but there was no hesitation in his response. "It must come. Let it."

  "But Raventhorne will die!" Her words echoed and reechoed in the hollow that was her brain; her tongue was like lead in her mouth, each movement of it an effort. With supreme courage she started to walk towards her uncle, to stop the senseless slaughter from happening, to do something, anything! But before she had even taken a step, Ransome had her arm in a vice grip.

  "No, Olivia!" His whisper was uncommonly harsh. "One of them must be eliminated today! Leave them be."

  Standing next to Olivia, John Sturges shuddered and looked ill as he repeatedly rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. He muttered something to Ransome but received no reply. Eyes riveted, face bloodless, Ransome only watched. And waited.

  "Two . . ."

  With the lazy grace of a fawn taking its ease, Raventhorne raised a hand to brush a slick of hair off his forehead. In his expression there was neither fear nor, indeed, hostility. Only an oddly amused curiosity—and that enduring contempt. Within the empty caverns of Olivia's mind arose a recurring refrain: Jai Raventhorne is going to die, Jai Raventhorne is going to die. Did she care? she wondered idly. She could not tell. From behind, someone took her hand and pressed it as if in support. She turned to look and saw that it was Willie Donaldson. He shook his grizzled grey head in a cautionary gesture, a tacit reference to her abortive attempt at intervention. "You canna do aught, lassie, not in your condition." She smiled without having heard anything.

  "Three!"

  In the sepulchral silence, hushed as in a tomb, nothing moved; there was not a breath, not a whisper. Then Raventhorne laughed. "What's the matter, Sir Joshua? Running short of courage again?"

  The cutting barb preceded by a minim three simultaneous happenings: Sir Joshua's revolver blazed, Raventhorne sidestepped—in a lightning reflex—and behind his shoulder an exquisite gilt-framed Belgian mirror of handsome dimensions exploded in a firework display of tinkling glass. Extensive as it was, the room reverberated with the shot as if it had been cannon fire. Women screamed, there was pandemonium all around and the noise of human voices was ear shattering. No one was certain as to what exactly had happened and in precisely what sequence. In the babble there were hoarse oaths, incoherent expostulations and a few hysterical giggles. Then, gradually, the smoke started to clear; the confusion spent itself and receded. What emerged from both was the form of Jai Raventhorne still standing erect and once more in the same place and the same derisive posture as before the shot. The room froze. Once more everyone fell silent. Could it be that the best of the evening's entertainment was still to come?

  "Try again, Sir Joshua!" Raventhorne's taunt was soft but incisive. In it now was a ring of confidence. "Aim three inches lower this time. My heart still beats."

  There was a ripple of disappointment around the room. Dammit, not a drop of blood shed yet? What the deuce could Josh be thinking of! Slowly and very deliberately, Sir Joshua's right hand rose again. As he took aim, his facial muscles were taut with concentration, his dark brown eyes hooded into slits and unmoving. Once more curled around the hairspring trigger, his index finger was as steady as the rock out of which his huge body seemed to be hewn. It seemed impossible that he could miss again. In desperation, Olivia swivelled her head to look imploringly at Arthur Ransome, her own limbs petrified into immobility, her senses skittered. But Ransome neither felt her look nor returned it. He stood as if in a trance, motionless, staring. The suspense of the moment was excruciating. Eyes boggled, mouths gaped and foreheads dripped with sweat, but not a hand rose to dab them dry. Everyone waited for that second shot with which the life of Jai Raventhorne would be ended. To even blink might deny them the thrill of a lifetime, the culmination of a strange vendetta such as they had not seen before nor, probably, ever would again.

  An eternity passed. But Sir Joshua's second shot did not come. Time pulsed by in tick-tock rhythm as a dozen clocks marked collective heartbeats. Patiently everyone waited, breath bottled tightly, eyes still wide and unblinking. The seconds passed, and then a minute—and still there was no second shot. Sir Joshua's index finger hugging the trigger, caressing it, trembled once, and then it trembled again. Nothing in his face changed, not even the fixedness of the eyes boring into those of his intended victim. But slowly his firing arm descended until it was once more hanging loose and vertical by his side. For a moment longer the two men held each other's gaze, one challenging and derisive, the other ungiving and unreadable. Swinging lazily, the Colt dangled from Sir Joshua's forefinger, then with a soft plop fell onto the carpet. In the electrifying silence it could have been a clangor. Sir Joshua did not pick it up again. What he picked up instead was his greatcoat draped over Ransome's arm, behind him.

  Very briefly, his expression casual and untroubled, Sir Joshua smiled, first at Ransome, then at Olivia. He arranged the coat in careful folds over his own arm, turned on his heel and started to walk out of the room. Despite the universal puzzlement, no one stopped him; no one uttered a word in question or comment. Parting, like the Red Sea before Moses, the crowd merely gaped, the mystification unsaid. As when he had entered, Sir Joshua's steps were firm, his towering figure stately and imperious. In no more than a quarter of a minute, he had traversed the length of the room and passed through its doorway.

  Puzzlement became shock, and shock, indignation—and then all was bedlam. There were incensed opinions being voiced everywhere, all at once. What the devil did Josh think he was up to, dash it ...? How dare he, an Englishman and a gentleman, lose his nerve in the midst of his own challenge? Why, it was outrageous! Worse, in scandalous poor taste, scandalous! The man had proved a disgrace to decent colonial society, to say nothing of to his Club. The consensus having been arrived at with her own shrill participation, the Spin decided to finally swoon. Vociferous in their disappointment at having been short changed in their expectations, everyone decided it was time to go home.

  Only Barnabus Slocum heaved a long-suffering sigh of private relief as he swabbed the pouring perspiration from his face. Had that damn fool Josh actually killed the half-caste bastard (as Slocum had secretly hoped), he, personally, would have been in a pretty pickle as the station's chief law officer. It would have bee
n a clear case of murder. He would have had to go through the tedious procedures of arresting and charging Josh publicly. Of course, subsequently a case would be devised somehow or other for self-defence, but with so many blasted witnesses it would have been sticky, to say the least—damn sticky! Josh would have had to be given at least simple imprisonment for three years. The native community would have howled, naturally, and there would have been hot, embarrassing exchanges with London. Just as well the man had not only missed the first time around but then also turned yellow. Slocum was damned if he understood how, but then he wasn't about to probe further. As for that bloody, trouble-making sod, Raventhorne . . .

  Slocum looked around, as everyone else appeared to be doing, with perplexity, but there was no sign in the room of the man whose life had missed being extinguished by a whisker. Sometime during the melee he too had slipped out, leaving behind even more unanswered questions. Grudgingly, another consensus of opinion was conceded. A dashed shame, of course, that Josh had unaccountably misfired, but neither could it be gainsaid that Kala Kanta himself had displayed exemplary courage. Not every man—not even a pure-blooded Englishman!—could have flirted with death with quite such panache. And that too unarmed and in confrontation with a crack marksman of proven mettle. It hurt to admit it, naturally, but British fair play decreed that even the devil, when deserving of it, be given his just due.

  Suffocated by the warmth of a pressing crowd, all talking at once in their expressions of polite thanks and good nights, Olivia finally capitulated. Someone, perhaps Willie Donaldson or the doctor, she could not tell which, steadied her with an arm and then lowered her into a chair. In her hazy vision she saw Lubbock approach, his face alight with pleasure at having seen this dreary town redeem itself with some goddam action. His grinning lips moved but she did not hear a word. Mrs. Sturges, John's mother, placed a handkerchief soaked in eau-de-Cologne on her forehead; a familiar voice—Estelle's?—murmured soothing words and John Sturges's strong hand vigorously fanned her face to produce cooling breezes. Olivia closed her eyes in transient relief, but she knew that she was going to faint. Before she actually did so a second later, a wild thought streaked through her mind, almost reducing her to hysterical laughter.

  Now she had one more score to settle with Jai Raventhorne. Not content with having ruined her life, he had also damn near ruined her party.

  CHAPTER 18

  Whether ruined or not, Olivia's extraordinarily suspenseful burra khana was the talk of the station everywhere on the following day. Little else was considered worthy of dissection at the Tolly's Sunday brunch, on the cricket pitches and in private homes, both European and native. Nor was the matter likely to be laid to rest through many more days and weeks to come. It was, everyone agreed without reservation, the most conversationally productive event in the town since 'Forty-five, when Charlie Bagshott-Brown had decamped with his wife's jewellery, his employer's petty cash and his daughter's piano teacher, and Prudence Bagshott-Brown had retaliated by inviting her friends to a public bonfire of her husband's remaining possessions on the Maidan. That Olivia's lavish dinner-party would have been even more conversationally fertile had Sir Joshua not made such a spectacle of himself by turning his back on his challenge was a matter of collective regret. But few denied that whatever the quantum of unplanned entertainment generated, it had been worth every minute of the evening.

  Olivia spent the morning in bed. Her physical and emotional stamina was exhausted. And once more she was a victim of that convulsing nausea that was an inevitable symptom of her condition. Honed into a habit, her selective memory resolutely pushed aside for the time being the more devastating aspects of the evening: Raventhorne's diabolical return, the crippling suspense, her uncle's unforgivable melodramatics, Estelle's unspeakable duplicity in inviting both Raventhorne and her father, and Sir Joshua's strange wilfulness in inviting public scorn. Was she relieved that it had been so, that Raventhorne still lived? Olivia chose not to think about that at all. What she filled her mind and heart with instead was an overwhelming prayer of gratitude; Jai Raventhorne had no suspicions about Amos. She and her son were safe! And now with both Raventhorne and her cousin out of her life forever as of today, the path was clear for the return of her darling son from Kirtinagar.

  For the moment nothing else mattered.

  At tea time Arthur Ransome called, hunched with unhappiness, drawn and suddenly aged, and sunk in mute depression. Making inquiries about her health and being reassured by Olivia, he then relapsed into silence and sat sipping his tea with no further attempt at conversation. What had happened last night was harrowing enough; it was not easy for him to listen to the harsh mockeries and ridicule now being heaped openly on a friend with whom he had shared almost all his life. But what appeared to be weighting him down now went far beyond the reach of mere public displeasure. Something pressed on his mind that could not be explained by the debacle of last evening. Olivia's heart went out to Ransome, but she had no words with which to solace him. Rather than insult him with platitudes, she chose to merely sit, sharing his silence. In the face of his loss of spirit, she even felt involuntary pangs of sympathy for her uncle. If she had had to make self-destroying decisions in her life, so perhaps had Sir Joshua. As ordained by circumstances, the blueprint of his life too was perhaps as tragic in all its compulsions as that of the rest of them. Even as tragic perhaps as the life of the man he had tried to destroy last night.

  That morning, early, a letter had been delivered to Olivia from John Sturges. He had begged to be received, even briefly, one last time before their departure for Cawnpore. Not unkindly, for she had nothing against Estelle's husband, whom she liked without qualification, Olivia had used her fatigue and indisposition as an excuse for her inability to receive any visitors. In a separate envelope, there was also a letter from Estelle. That Olivia had returned unopened.

  As far as she was concerned, Estelle was dead. As dead as Estelle's own mother still considered her, never to be accepted back into her life.

  And then, the following morning, Amos was returned!

  Fatigue forgotten, Olivia was delirious with joy. The child's howl of indignation as she strangled him with a hug and covered his face with kisses was music to her ears, starved for so long of the sound. She could not stop touching him, caressing him, savouring him like a hungry man suddenly presented a feast. He had grown considerably even during that one month, and now actually had a tooth showing. Mary Ling displayed the fine line of white in his gums as proudly as if it had been her very own achievement.

  Throughout the day Olivia did nothing save sit and devour her son with her eyes. One by one, she celebrated each of his new, unfamiliar aspects—the rounder plumpness of his cheeks, the growing inquisitiveness in his darting grey eyes as they perceived and appraised everything in the nursery, his denser riot of silken black hair, the newly acquired sounds and gestures and little mannerisms. With all their trials behind them—almost, almost!—she swore silently that they would never again be parted, not for a moment, not if it was within her power to prevent it.

  But in the meanwhile, there still remained a great deal to do. Infused with renewed energy, Olivia settled down to prepare in earnest for her imminent departure.

  Crates reopened for the ball had to be packed and sealed again, the contents listed for Donaldson's benefit. Unwanted bric-a-brac had to be given away to charity, the staff's wages and baksheesh computed, gifts purchased for home, cupboards and writing desks cleared, bills paid, office matters settled and, of course, the house lease finalised with Lubbock. Mary's boisterous songs and Amos's amusing responses up in the nursery as she worked greatly relieved the tedium of Olivia's chores, and as she laboured she smiled almost in contentment. If life gave her nothing else but her son and a return to her father, it would have still given her enough.

  The pile of thank-you notes that were being delivered in a steady flow Olivia discarded unread in her waste-paper basket. She had no wish to be reminded of an evening
that had brought nothing but all-around agony. One by one she went through the compartments of her desk, throwing away without remorse the accumulated impedimenta of months. It was as she shook out the final drawer that something fell onto her desk flap with a metallic tinkle. For an instant Olivia's breath caught; she had no recollection of having stored the silver locket here. But then, ruthlessly, she swept that too into her waste-paper basket. The past was finished, forgotten. She had no more need of its tawdry souvenirs.

  But that night, irritatingly, she could not sleep. An odd little prickle kept gnawing away at her mind, refusing to let it rest. Finally, with a mild oath of exasperation, she rose and walked towards what she knew to be at the core of her problem: the waste-paper basket. Cursing both her compulsion and her weakness in indulging it, she retrieved the locket and held it for a moment in the palm of her hand. Against her pink skin it looked tarnished, even shoddy. Returning to her bed she sat down, sighed heavily and, with her thoughts again rampaging, started to polish it absently with a corner of her bed sheet.

  In marrying Freddie you have allowed him to appropriate something that I considered to be mine.

  It was not, of course, to Amos that he had referred. It was to her! There was a time when she would have been flattered by the conceit, but now it merely helped to incense her further. Once, her affliction had been gullibility. It was not that now, nor would it ever be again. Mine! With what infernal presumptuousness he had staked a claim to what he himself had abandoned with such irreversibility! And he had had the nerve to fabricate the existence of a mythical letter, proud that he had written away her life and appended it with his signature. How conveniently he had hidden behind silence rather than explain that ultimate abomination, his shameless relationship with her cousin! Mine? No, he had never accepted her as his, never, not for an instant, even during that much flaunted affinity. Now, as smooth as cream, he had twisted the facts to brand her as the villain. Perhaps not even Estelle in her bovine stupidity was to blame. Perhaps. The culpability was totally his, his, his.