Ryman, Rebecca

by Olivia

  "Doesn't much like surprises?" Olivia provided with a derisive laugh. "Yes, I know. And you omitted to tell him in advance of your game plan for a family reunion!"

  Estelle flushed. "If I had, he wouldn't have come," she said simply.

  "And that astonishes you? You expected a man who had vowed to destroy every one of your family to suddenly accept olive branches in public? Yes, Estelle, you must have been mad to hope for such consideration!"

  "That is not all there is to Jai!" Estelle cried. "You don't know everything yet, Olivia."

  "Nor wish to, dear Coz! All your many whys and wherefores of whatever happened or did not happen are not part of my life anymore. Had your father been able to pull that trigger, my reactions would have been no different."

  With an unhappy nod, Estelle conceded the point. "Yes, I can understand your hatred for Jai, but he is my half brother, Olivia. There are many things about him that I have truly learned to love. At present he is furious with me, I know, but his anger will pass. He will forgive me because he will see that I meant well—and because he too cares for me as a sister. All these months that we were together . . ." She stopped. Taking note of Olivia's stubborn lack of response, she stood chewing uncertainly on her lip and refrained from saying more.

  "I rejoice that you have found a brother, Estelle, and I wish you good luck in your relationship." Olivia unlocked the door and held it open for her cousin to leave, a pointed reminder that the debate was now over. "I take it that you start on your journey to Cawnpore tomorrow? I hope you have safe passage and contentment in your new home. My love to you both and to Uncle

  Josh."

  Estelle's mouth curved in a scornful little crescent. "Yes, I see why you went to such inordinate lengths to keep me from Amos. You fear that Jai will learn of his son and want to take him away, and naturally you believe that the one to inform him will be me!"

  It was a doubt that had been haunting Olivia from the moment she had seen her cousin in the nursery. She battled not to voice it but her anxiety flared and she could not stop herself. "And will you?"

  A great sorrow settled over Estelle. "You are justified in your distrust, I know that. It is I who helped to deform your life, albeit unwittingly. To even ask for forgiveness now is an insult. I accept that you can never forgive me. But, for whatever you consider it's worth, I promise that I will not be the one to inform Jai about his son." Wistfully, she smiled. "Believe it or not, you are still the paragon I admire most. I could never harm you knowingly. So, go to your father in peace, Olivia. Your secret is safe with me."

  She fell silent and waited in hope for some sign of friendship, some final word of affection as they parted for the last time. None came. Granite faced and unforgiving, Olivia returned her pleading look with matching silence.

  "Well, farewell then, my heartless Coz." Disappointed, Estelle made a hollow attempt at lightness. "I wish you two a safe journey home with much happiness in Hawaii." Formally they kissed each other on the cheek. Casting a loving glance at the sleeping child, Estelle suddenly laughed. "Isn't it ironical, Olivia, that without even knowing of each other's existence or destiny, both Jai and his son will have lived deprived of their fathers?" With that final thought, she left.

  The irony of the thought, however, stretched even further. When she voiced it Estelle was not to know that such a deprivation was not to be that of only Jai Raventhorne and his son.

  Three days after they had departed for Cawnpore, a messenger brought for Olivia a letter from John Sturges. Sir Joshua Templewood was dead. Sometime during their first night away, as they camped in the compound of a dak bungalow near Burdwan, he had walked out into the dense forest that surrounded the region. There, in solitary communion with nature and her prowling denizens, he had placed the barrel of his revolver in his mouth, pointed it upward and shot himself through the head. The act had been committed lying full length on a grassy verge with a cushion carefully arranged beneath his head. Consequently, whatever mess was made by his blood and brains had been efficiently absorbed by the cushion. The attention to detail was not surprising; as everyone knew, Sir Joshua was in essence an extremely neat man, fastidious almost to a fault in his personal habits.

  A chowkidar, keeping watch over the sleeping travellers, had heard the shot and, fearing dacoits, had immediately alerted the party. It was as the men were hastily taking up their weapons to repulse a possible attack that Sir Joshua's absence was noticed. A search-party was mounted bearing guns and lanterns. Deep in the bowels of the jungle in the direction from which the shot had been heard, Sir Joshua's body was found, with the back of his head and half his face missing. He had left no note to explain his act of self-destruction. Perhaps he had recognised in his infallible perceptions that none would be necessary.

  It was not until morning, John wrote, that a village carpenter could be located to fashion a crude coffin, and a priest disturbed from his early duties at a Burdwan mission and persuaded to administer the rites required for a burial. Reluctant to sanctify a suicide, the priest had protested violently. He had to be taken to the site by force and the simple and hasty interment conducted at gun point. The grave had been dug deep because predators were forever on the hunt for handy cadavers, and it was unmarked, save for a rough cross. The ceremony concluded, the party had to hurry away by a different route to avoid trouble with the local authorities and District Collector. Subsequently, two witnesses had been bribed to swear to a more socially acceptable cause of death, and a vaguely worded death certificate extracted from a drunken medical officer in the mofussil in exchange for seven rupees and three bottles of army grog. Estelle had not taken her father's death at all well . . .

  John had sent his message from their next stopping post. A similar letter had been dispatched to Arthur Ransome. Should an obituary notice be placed in the Calcutta newspaper? John left that, and its wording, for Ransome to decide.

  Olivia was horrorstruck by the news, then bereft and riddled with remorse. Buried in the turmoil of her own situation, she had selfishly not even bid her uncle farewell before he departed on his fateful journey! She had profoundly resented much that Sir Joshua had perpetrated upon them all in his arrogant intractability. But now that he was gone she knew that she would miss him sorely, miss the many fulfilling hours they had spent together. She had learned much from him; she would always be grateful for his many kindnesses, his abundant generosity to her, and would always mourn him. In the aftermath of the shock of his death by his own hand, when her tears had been shed and the sorrow subsumed, Olivia had an inadvertent thought: Lady Bridget would have approved of at least this, his final thoughtfulness in avoiding a scandal by blowing out his brains away from Calcutta.

  Without further delay Olivia hurried over to the Templewood house to be with Arthur Ransome in his moments of ultimate grief. The house and servants were shrouded in a pall of gloom, and poor Rehman and Babulal were inconsolable. Ransome, however, was not at home. Aware that as soon as the terrible news became public hordes of visitors would descend to unwittingly desecrate his solitude, he had probably retired to some secluded corner elsewhere to grapple with his irredeemable loss and shed his tears in privacy.

  It was a loss, Olivia saw now, that Arthur Ransome had expected for a very long time. And he had been accurate in his calculated prediction: Of the two men, one had to be eliminated; and now one had. Another victim? No, not this time. A casualty, yes, but never a victim. Sir Joshua Templewood's pride would not have ever allowed such an indignity.

  Olivia returned home and sat down immediately to write a letter to her cousin Estelle.

  It was during the next night that the bleeding started.

  "Not a healthy sign, my girl, not healthy at all." Summoned in the small hours of the morning, Dr. Humphries looked concerned.

  "Could it be something serious?" A chill hand wrapped itself around Olivia's heart. "Could there be any danger of . . . losing the baby?"

  His expression mellowed. "No, no, nothing like that. At lea
st, not at the moment. We'll have the haemorrhage checked in no time, but no more burra khana jollifications and suchlike." He frowned his displeasure. "What you will have to do now is rest."

  "Rest?" She straggled up on an elbow. "For how long?"

  "Oh, not long. I'd say about a month." Whistling, no doubt to introduce some note of good cheer, he set about preparing his medications.

  "A month!" Olivia blanched. "But I sail within a week!"

  "So I hear. And right sorry we'll be too to lose you, my dear. But Hawaii or Timbuktu or, for that matter, capers around that blasted Agency—they're all out of the question. That is," he peered at her from beneath bristling eyebrows, "if you don't want to risk losing the child. Do you?"

  "No, of course not." Miserably, Olivia laid back her head again. "But I must also leave ..."

  "You will, m'dear, you will." He patted her hand. "One month here or there won't make all that much difference."

  "I can rest on the ship!" She grabbed his hand beseechingly. "I could stay in bed every day, all the way to Honolulu. Mary will take good care of me, you know that."

  He sat down and looked solemn. "There are storms in the Pacific, dreadful storms, Olivia. I know, I've been in some. The buffeting is fierce. Not even those in strong condition can withstand it. Few of the ships carry adequate medical supplies, surgical equipment in case of emergency, if they carry doctors at all. Willing to chance all that, my girl? If you are, then by all means sail. With my blessings."

  Olivia was crippled with despair. "But if I delay now, it will be too late!"

  "Too late?" Not knowing the problem, he looked puzzled. "Well then, just have your baby here! It isn't the end of the world, you know. I may be a grizzled old goat with rude bedside manners, but I've brought more confounded little blighters into this station's bloody confusions than you memsahibs have had hot breakfasts! Why all the silly fuss? Don't work up a lather for nothing; it's bad for the liver." He dismissed the matter with a cluck and began rattling off instructions to Mary. Then, having sent her off to the kitchen on some errand, he sat down and yawned away his drowsiness. "Incidentally, that tamasha of yours—damn fine bash, you know. Millie hasn't stopped talking about it." He removed his glasses to polish them. "Wouldn't have expected a tough old buzzard like Josh to turn chicken. But perhaps just as well. Not every hostess wants murder on her menu, eh?" The news of Sir Joshua's death had evidently not yet become common knowledge, although it soon would. In the kindly doctor's seeming insensitivity, however, Olivia felt a stab of pain. She closed her eyes and turned her face away. "It was all that Wild West stuff that brought on this little drama, wasn't it?"

  "No," Olivia said bitterly, the sorrow cleaving her heart many pronged and many sided. "But I see now that I've been living in a soap bubble. I should have had the sense to see that it could not last forever."

  "Soap bubble?" Used to the babblings of patients, he paid scant heed to hers and, as Mary returned, became busy again. Olivia submitted to his ministrations without protest, barely conscious of them. It was as he was leaving that Dr. Humphries sought to offer more salutary advice. "If I were you, I'd send again for that giddy cousin of yours. I hear they're not long gone and are probably still within reach of a swift horse and courier. She'll cheer you up pretty fast, I wager!"

  Olivia gave an unhearing nod, but as soon as he left she succumbed to a despair so violent, so fathomless and unrestrained, that it seemed to devour her. Stifling her voice with a pillow, she started to scream. And continued to scream until her bones ached and her throat rebelled and dried up in defeat.

  Of course, as always, nobody heard her.

  She had no more resources left.

  Within Olivia's grasp now lay no more devices with which to divert the flow of a fortune so single-mindedly malignant in its intent. Exploiting her weakened condition were other searing anxieties. Raventhorne suspected nothing yet, but for how long? Olivia cursed the waywardness of her body that had again made her a prisoner constantly awaiting the call of a hangman, forgetting what gifts that body had given.

  To secrete Amos once more in Kirtinagar was impossible; Raventhorne was a frequent visitor to the palace. No matter how total her faith in Kinjal and Arvind Singh, royal courts were rife with intrigue, with invisible spies. And servants talked. To rent a house in some distant mofussil and remain there with Amos until her baby was born and then swiftly leave for Hawaii was to invite even more attention. Why, pendulating tongues would ask, should Lady Birkhurst choose to have both her children away from station? It was not the gossip that deterred Olivia; it was the shrewd interpretations Raventhorne would put on it. Amos could, of course, be dispatched to Hawaii in advance with Mary Ling, but that option Olivia could not bear to consider seriously. To be deprived now, at this lowest of low ebbs, of her only emotional support would be an intolerable act of self-cruelty. She needed Amos for her survival, to be able to face whatever else was yet to come. The thought of Cawnpore flashed through her mind too and then lingered. Olivia recognised that this was, perhaps, also Estelle's lowest ebb, her most crying hour of need. The loss of her father would have brought crushing anguish— and, unavoidably, it would have also brought lashings of renewed guilt. To try to resolve now who had started what, when and where was futile; but the toxic little seed that Estelle had helped to sow, from which had sprouted so much of their collective present misery, would now inevitably infuse even more poison in her unfortunate cousin's mind. Nevertheless, however much she might want to provide solace to Estelle, Olivia had of necessity to abandon any such project. Dr. Humphries would never allow her to travel by coach on rough roads in her present condition. And, for the moment, nothing was as vital in her life as the precious "mango seed" that had arrived in her womb with so little warning.

  That Jai Raventhorne might be delayed in his return from Assam and that she would have time to escape after all, Olivia did not even consider. With the configurations of her stars so relentlessly inimical, not even by divine oversight could such a miracle be possible.

  Sunk as he still was in his own morass of dejection, Arthur Ransome—again a daily visitor—was even more depressed by her all-pervasive air of hopelessness. He disapproved of the reclusivity on which Olivia insisted. Many kind sympathisers called and left their cards—especially now since the news of Sir Joshua's ghastly death "in the jaws of a man-eating tiger near Burdwan" had shocked the city out of its wits—but Olivia would see only Ransome, the Donaldsons and Dr. Humphries. As he was in the habit of doing lately, Ransome came armed with the station's newspapers, both English and vernacular, in which glowing tributes were being paid every day to an erstwhile merchant prince who, despite his recent reverses, had left an indelible mark on the corporate life of the city. There were, of course, many veiled and hostile references to Raventhorne, but none at all to that memorable evening that had started the process of Sir Joshua's demise long before he placed the revolver barrel in his mouth. By dying, it seemed, Sir Joshua had earned the station's forgiveness for an act at first believed to be cowardice but now talked of as one of honourable mercy toward an unarmed opponent. The papers were full of the early history of Templewood and Ransome, spiced liberally with anecdotes of their Canton days. Clinging to his nostalgia, Ransome relived their lives vicariously through the newspaper articles, reading them aloud to Olivia, enjoying again the company of a friend forever lost. And as a last act of loyalty he had concealed the true cause of death in the obituary.

  One day, emotionally drained by his second-hand existence through written words—and perhaps prompted by the good doctor—Ransome hesitantly suggested that Olivia send for Estelle from Cawnpore. "You must forgive her now, Olivia; the poor child has lost both her parents," he said heavily, unaware of what had passed between them already. "Just as there are comedies of error, we must now think of our mishaps as tragedies of circumstances even now not totally irredeemable. Whatever is left to end will perhaps still end well for us." He shuddered with the force of a sigh. "Those of us who
remain, that is."

  Olivia looked away. How was he to know, this most gentle, most sincere of all the dramatis personae in those "tragedies of circumstances even now not totally irredeemable," just how far it still was for her from ending? Laden with her own sorrows, she did not reply to his suggestion. She knew, however, in her unfailing self-honesty that she had been harsh with her cousin, unduly so. Whatever Estelle's delusions about Raventhorne, in Olivia's mind now there was no doubt that her cousin had told her the truth. But for the moment, she decided, she didn't want to talk about it. Instead, she stirred a new topic. "I've been meaning to ask you for some time, Uncle Arthur, about the sale of your house. Have you had any luck yet?"

  Ransome made a wry face. "With Raventhorne back? There will be no luck with any buyers, my dear. He will see to that."

  She couldn't believe what she had heard! "Even now? Even after Uncle Josh is dead and buried . . .?" She was incredulous.

  "But I'm not."

  "He can have nothing against you!" Olivia said warmly, her indignation so sharp that it shook her out of her torpor. "I have an idea—since Lubbock cannot now have my house, shall I ask if he might consider yours? I understand he's impatient to settle down as soon as possible."

  "Lubbock will not consider mine. He too deals with Trident."

  Even in her residual apathy, she felt a stab of irritation. "Well, we'll never know unless we ask, will we? Hal Lubbock is an American, a roughneck, a born and bred fighter. He's not scared of bullies!"

  Ransome still looked dubious. "But why should Lubbock want to buy unnecessary trouble?"

  "He's a maverick; he doesn't give a damn about trouble. Perhaps he'll even thrive on it! I feel it truly is worth at least a try."

  Ransome scanned her face, his own uneasy. The colour had risen in her cheeks and her expression was suddenly animated. "Now, now—you're not going to appropriate for yourself more of my problems, are you, dear? I would much rather your prime duty remained to your health and to your unborn child."