Ryman, Rebecca

by Olivia

  "Yes, of course it will," Olivia murmured. But for the rest of the evening she remained abstracted, lost once more in her own thoughts.

  They ate a simple supper of mulligatawny soup with warm, crusty rolls, and later played a few desultory games of backgammon. Neither was inclined to make idle small talk, both steeped in their separate ruminations and both sipping rather more glasses of claret than they had intended.

  "He couldn't fight it, you know. And it finally killed him."

  "What?" Olivia was startled by Ransome's sudden remark just as she had asked for the decanter to be refilled. It seemed apropos of nothing.

  He stirred out of his brooding study of the opposite wall and sighed. "Jai was right to mock that night, Olivia. When it came to the crunch, face to face, Josh didn't have the guts to pull the trigger on his son . . ." He broke off, confused. "You . . . er, do know, I think, that Josh is ... was Jai's father ...?" Never having said it before, he coloured.

  "Yes."

  He was full of remorse. "Forgive me, my dear, if there are matters that I have concealed from you, but there are areas of their lives, Josh and Bridget's lives, that I did not feel morally competent to discuss with anyone. Now that it is all over . . .," perturbed again, he hung his head low, "yes, all over, there is no more need of shameful fabrications. I can now tell you everything, even my own part in the sordid saga. It will be a relief for me to unburden myself fully, that is," momentarily, he looked uncertain, "if the nostalgic ramblings of a bereft old man will not bore you out of your mind."

  The burning anticipation, the insatiable hunger with which Olivia had once waited for revelations about Jai Raventhorne's life had long been dissipated. Now if she shook her head in denial of Ransome's hesitation, it was for her own selfish reasons. Foreknowledge, she saw, was ammunition. Should it be her misfortune to ever confront Raventhorne again, she would need adequate weaponry. Mere hatred would not be enough. She leaned forward with interest and asked, "What was it that stopped him from pulling that trigger? I can hardly believe it was compassion!"

  "Compassion?" Ransome laid his head back and looked up at the ceiling. "No. Not compassion. Something less tangible, more abstract. I wish I could find a name for it but I cannot." They had not yet talked of that strange evening, or of its traumatic and far-reaching consequences. Olivia saw that it was there that his thoughts now dwelt. "You see, my dear, I believe in Estelle's innocence, but Josh never did. Despite all her protestations, he was convinced that Jai had desecrated her—and he was insane with shame, with fury. They were both his children, after all. That there should be such . . . contamination between them lodged like a burning coal in his gullet. He knew he now had to kill Raventhorne. He had no other option left."

  Involuntarily, Olivia smiled, not without some scepticism. Ransome had put it rather curiously, considering that was what her uncle had been trying to do for years!

  He caught her thought and was again confused. "Yes, I know what you are thinking, but there were factors, other factors . . ." He tossed up his hands in apology. "I see that I must start at the beginning if I expect to make sense of this. And the beginning, I suppose, is when Josh first met Jai's mother up in Assam." His eyes crinkled at the corners in the effort to recall a history more than three decades old. "Much of this is already known to Estelle. Had she been told earlier, Josh might still be alive." With unsteady hands he lit a much favoured cheroot and watched closely as a perfect smoke ring shivered away into nothingness. "Anyway, Josh had gone up into those hills to see for himself the recently discovered giant tea trees, which everyone was talking about. He was very young then, newly wed in England and awaiting the arrival of his bride. Our partnership had started to prosper with regular China Coast runs, his mother had recently selected a handsome residence for him—the present bungalow— and Josh himself was as carefree as a lark." Visualising the past, his face seemed to come alive in the recreation of that contentment. "But in those godforsaken mountains, Olivia, strange things happen to men's minds, especially to those of white men unused to the jungles. She was, Josh said, a mere slip of a girl, innocent and untouched like a naiad, a magical sprite spun out of moonbeams on a midsummer's night . . ." He stopped and blushed. "At least, that's how Josh described her. Of course he was instantly smitten. Bewitched was the word he used later. Like many hill people unsullied by civilisation—or what we believe to be civilised—she was a child of nature, free as a mountain stream, delicate as a petal. Josh had never seen anything like her and, well, he lost his head. He forgot everything, past and future. Only the present mattered—and this ethereal nymph sent by the gods to guide him through the portals of paradise." He coughed and added quickly, "Josh's words again. Anyway, he eventually had to return home, still befuddled with euphoria. But then Bridget arrived and, within a week of their rapturous reunion, Josh had forgotten Assam as easily as if it had been a dream. Perhaps to him a dream was all it had ever been."

  Olivia pulled her shawl closer about her shoulders. It was suddenly eerie talking before flickering fire-light about a dead woman whose silver locket she had once worn around her neck. She wished she had not agreed to listen with quite such willingness; she wished she had not drunk so much wine either, but it was too late. Drowned in his tumbling reminiscences, eager to shed their ancient load, Ransome would be hurt if silenced.

  "Unfortunately for both Josh and the girl, she happened to be the only and much cherished daughter of a tribal chief. Her involvement with a white man was a disgrace for her people, especially when her condition became evident. Tribal laws are rigid, the same for all. By consensus of the elders, she was expelled from tribal country and told never to return. She had some silver jewellery. She sold it and fled to the plains in search of the sahib she knew only as Josh. It took her months to complete the journey, further weeks to locate the house. By the time she arrived at the gate she was in a state of collapse and her child was almost due."

  A detail flapped loose in Olivia's memory. "So, it was to the Templewood house that she went, not to yours. And it was in those servants' quarters that her child was born."

  It was not said as a reminder of his earlier lie, but he was again instantly apologetic. "Yes. I did not tell you the whole truth then, Olivia, but from what you hear now nothing has been omitted. Yes, it was Josh's staff that gave her shelter and it was through them that her story, or part of it, was pieced together.

  By now Josh had only a hazy memory of the girl, but when it sharpened, he was appalled. It was a Sunday morning, I recall. Both Bridget and Josh's mother were at church. Nevertheless he panicked and came running for my assistance. Of course I agreed immediately to house the girl in my servants' quarters, but before the transfer could be effected, Bridget and his mother returned. The girl's presence was hastily explained with the alibi that she was the younger gardener's wife. Neither of the ladies was particularly interested. The lie was accepted at face value and the girl's transfer to my house deferred. But then that night, Josh's luck ran out further. Around midnight, amidst a fearful monsoon storm, the girl was delivered of her son, Josh's son, with the dhobi's wife and daughter acting as midwives. And with that deliverance, unknowingly and innocently, the poor girl diverted the course of all our histories forever."

  He stopped to pluck an orange from a fruit bowl resting between them and to peel it with singular concentration. It was only after they had shared its juicy segments in mutual silence that he again picked up his narrative.

  "Imagine the nymph, Olivia, that unfettered creature, imprisoned in a dark cell like a butterfly pinned under glass. It was pathetic, dreadful—but she, poor child, never had any thoughts of revenge against the man who had reduced her to this abysmal situation. It was the gods themselves who decided to come to her aid and rectify some of the imbalance in her young life without her intervention. Her mixed-blood son was born nameless but bearing ample proof of his parentage in his eyes. The connection was not difficult to make."

  "Who first made it, Aunt Bridget
?" Olivia asked.

  "Good heavens, no! Almost fresh out of a convent school with a prim, proper upbringing that taught her that even to think of sin was a sin, such a prospect never even occurred to poor Bridget. But to Lady Templewood it did, when she marched into the quarter to see the newborn, as she had done with every new addition on the premises. She knew instantly and she was livid. With no second thought, she commanded Josh to have mother and child removed immediately from the house, before Bridget too could make the connection. But you know something, Olivia?" Rubbing his chin as his memories jostled, Ransome paused. "Josh refused. For the first time that I can recall, he openly defied his mother. Finally, after much heated and surreptitious debate, Josh forced her to compromise. It was decided that they could stay, provided the girl never allowed the child to stray out of the servants' compound."

  Momentarily Olivia was astonished. How could such an arrangement have been successful and for so long? But then she recalled her own visit to the Templewood staff quarters behind the kitchen house. There had been hordes of children about whom she had neither seen nor whose existence she had even suspected. She remained silent.

  "The night after Jai's birth, Josh and I stole into the quadrangle to have a look at the infant he had so unfortunately sired. When he saw him, Josh was paralysed with shock. Then he was so overcome with feeling that his eyes filled. He realised that it was upon the face of his first-born, his son, that he gazed and he was speechless with awe. He was still appalled, disgusted, at what he had done, but at the same time he was fascinated, in some inexplicable way almost thrilled. And you know something else, Olivia?" The energy drained out of him and he seemed to wilt. "It has always been these two diametrically opposite emotions, emotions one would consider mutually exclusive, that have controlled Josh's relationship with his son since that first time he held him in his arms. If the paradox puzzled me, it absolutely bewildered Josh. That he should be horrified at having sunk low enough to have spawned a half-caste bastard, Josh understood. It was the other half of the paradox that confounded him, at times incensed him. To him it was a flaw in himself, a weakness—and Josh despised sentimental weakness, human fallibility. But that first night he was torn, utterly torn, and the illogicality in himself defeated him."

  "I don't suppose Uncle Josh ever considered actually acknowledging the relationship, did he?" This Olivia asked out of curiosity; she was now deeply intrigued.

  "Oh no." Ransome's denial was categorical. "No. There was never any question of that, never. Above all, Josh was fiercely jealous of his position in society. His driving power was ambition, pure and simple. Oh, he took pride in defying some minor social norms, but privately he retained a healthy respect for public opinion. He could not risk public condemnation in a matter of such grave moral laxity, and that too with a native woman. Hundreds of Englishmen before and since have fathered bastards, many of them half castes, but for Josh to invite open censure was tantamount to professional suicide. Besides, his was a happy, harmonious marriage. He had no wish to disturb it and invite more trouble."

  Olivia stretched out her legs to make herself more comfortable. It was late, but she felt not a hint of tiredness. "And through all those eight years Aunt Bridget did not have even a glimpse of the boy?"

  "Oh, she probably did have glimpses, but then, as you know, poor Bridget always despised native servants. She never had any interest in them as people, as individuals. To her they were all the same, thieves, cheats and liars to be suffered through necessity. Even if she did see the boy, she would have paid him scant attention."

  Without realising it, Ransome spoke also of Lady Bridget in the past tense. It was a small but significant lapse; it filled Olivia with melancholy—and with reinforced resoluteness. The fulfilment of Jai Raventhorne's twisted destiny might have destroyed others. She would not let it destroy either her or her son!

  "I think I told you earlier that the boy had this irritating habit of staring. It was, of course, at Josh that he used to stare, sometimes for hours, hiding in the bushes outside his study. Occasionally, Josh exploded with temper, but then, at other times, he tried to be kind and offered the boy sweets. Perhaps out of nervousness, perhaps because he was naturally resentful, sullen, the boy never responded. Once, when the boy ran away from Josh, he slipped and grazed his knee. Not realising that I was watching, Josh took out his handkerchief, brushed the graze, then tied the cloth round the injury with infinite gentleness. When he suddenly spied me, he pushed the boy away and stalked off in a huff, angry that I had caught him indulging that weakness he detested in himself. He never admitted it, you see, never. Not even to me. Maybe not to himself either."

  "But surely Raventhorne knew by the time he was eight that Uncle Josh was his father?" It seemed strange to Olivia that a child so aware of so many things would not.

  "Only God and Raventhorne know the answer to that. It is a possibility, certainly, but I doubt it."

  "Why?" Olivia persisted. "Didn't his mother ever tell him? Or, perhaps, one of the servants? Some of them must have at least suspected the truth."

  Her persistence seemed to disturb Ransome. He merely shook his head and said nothing. Still wondering, Olivia let the subject lapse. It was past midnight and the lamps burned low. Olivia rose to summon Salim to replenish their fuel and to order two glasses of hot milk and a plate of biscuits from the pantry. Then, avoiding the question that had worried him, she asked Ransome another. "All right, I accept that in those early years Uncle Josh did have some feelings, however secret, for his son. But then, why the savage change of later years? Why the bitter hatred?"

  "Ah!" Ransome exclaimed, raising a finger at her. "Ah—that was the essence, Olivia, the essence." He puffed vigorously at his cheroot, coughed and thumped his chest. He threw a rueful glance at the pile of stubs in the ash-tray and shook his head in self-reproach. "If it doesn't make sense, so much else in a mind divided against itself doesn't also, you know. Given a basically insoluble dilemma, it develops aspects and facets continually in collision with each other. So much so that in Josh's case, even Bridget became uneasy. What suspicions were building up in her mind we will never know now, but that night when she suddenly came face to face with the boy in the pantry, in a flash of insight she knew, perhaps because inwardly she was preparing for it. For her it was a shattering blow. Even more shattering was the look on Josh's face as he raised his crop again and then stilled his hand."

  You think I can ever forget what I saw in you that day? In the still of the night Lady Bridget's cry of despair rang in Olivia's ears with the clarity of a bell. She could now guess the context of that cry but she waited for Ransome to vocalise it.

  Forgetting his self-reproach of only a moment ago, he reached out for another cheroot and lit it. "Josh recognised the boy, you see, and could not lash him again. For a moment he could only stand and stare. It was only for a moment, but it was enough for Bridget. The emotion in Josh's expression was fleeting, but it was eloquent. And irreversible." He closed his eyes. "So much was destroyed that night, Olivia, so much! If Jai's birth in his father's house distorted our destinies, then this night in the pantry confirmed the mutilations. Bridget might conceivably have, in time, forgiven Josh his infidelity, the social crime of having lain with a native woman, the subsequent shame of a half-caste bastard, even his deceit in harbouring them in her house without her knowledge. What she could never forgive was his tacit, unguarded admission—to her, in her piety and propriety, a shameless admission—of also having feelings for the abomination of a half-caste bastard conceived in sin. She was ravaged with jealousy, heart-broken, bitter and disillusioned. In her sense of betrayal, of defilement of her sacred marriage vows, she collapsed and remained bed-ridden for months. Bridget never again lived without fear, nor Josh without guilt towards her for his deceit. Many years later Raventhorne was to return to her life. Mercifully, this was knowledge from which she was spared at that time, but fear of his return some day remained her most persistent trauma." Lifting the glass of forg
otten and now cold milk from where Salim had placed it silently, Ransome drank in noisy gulps, greedily, as if to slake an unquenchable thirst.

  "Bridget was terrified that if Raventhorne returned, his presence would revive those earlier emotions in her husband, that in his impetuosity Josh would be driven to acknowledge him publicly as his son, that out of sheer vindictiveness, Jai himself would talk. Because she was always a proud woman, Bridget bore her cross with dignity, but within herself she never ceased to suffer. And then, of course, Raventhorne did return." He levelled into a monotone. "The rest you know. I need hardly repeat it. All I see now is that whatever the reality, whatever the truth, however innocent Estelle may be, Bridget will not receive her daughter again. Will she ever forgive Josh now that he is gone? I don't know." He sat shaking his head, reliving his pain. "I don't know. I've written to her, of course. Possibly, she will not reply. If she grieves at all, she will do so quietly, secretly. If she doesn't, that too will be her privilege, not unjustified. Josh did cheat her out of her rightful life, Olivia. It was he who launched the irreversible chain of events, after all. It was his obsessions, his hate, that brought the abhorrent word incest into Bridget's chaste world—a word she would never have allowed in her mind, let alone through her lips. As Jai had vowed when he was fourteen, he did take everything away from them, especially the other family . . . oh! Did I ever tell you about that or did I omit it?" He frowned, then nodded. "Yes, of course I omitted it, but you shall have it now. Among everything that Jai said he would take from Josh was 'your other family.' Those were the three words he used, your other family. Recalling that Estelle had just been born then, the event that took place eighteen years later assumes a frightening significance, does it not?"

  Olivia sat motionless. Jai had already decided then to include Estelle somehow in his plan of general destruction? Yes, there was something frightening about such invidious planning. She shivered a little, then remembered that this very arch plotter might one day be her own adversary—and she shivered again.