by Olivia
Had it always been like this? Was it like this on that stormy night of more than three decades ago when that naiad's son's eyes, fashioned by his punitive heredity, had first seen the light of the world? In which corner had lain that child of nature shorn of her innocence, paying the price for a sin that was truly sinless? Clearly in her inner vision, Olivia saw a twisted young form writhing on the pock-marked floor in the throes of that agony that was also the act of life-giving. Nubile fingers clawed the air; a bloated torso, not unlike her own now, thrashed wildly from side to side. Shrill screams of supplication begged someone unseen for mercy; warm, viscous streams of blood snaked across the floor towards Olivia's feet, pouring forth from the battered child-woman not yet seventeen. In her ears Olivia heard the rasping demands of her lungs, the murmured cajolement of midwives, the rain as it lashed on the roof and then sidled in through the ceiling. A hush fell, as from spaces beyond the earth, and hovered awhile. From the depths of that hush emerged a sound, first trifling, then full blooded. It was the cry of a new-born, loud and lusty and angry at being hurled into a hostile world that would never accept it as one of its own.
Blindly, Olivia turned and ran out of the room, limp with sweat. The force of her fantasies was such that she could not breathe. If she had not grabbed the support of a broken column, she would have fainted.
For two days Olivia plunged herself into the soporific diversions of domesticity. She could not afford again to think, to indulge in the luxury of emotionalism, to deviate. Thought made her fallible, eroded her will-power. Happenstance had handed her a weapon. It was small but, like a needle, it was sharp. It would pierce unerringly. Nothing—not Kinjal's well-intentioned advice, or Estelle's half love for a half brother, or indeed her own hallucinations—could be permitted to deny her the chance to strike deeply. To keep herself on even keel, Olivia occupied herself with a frenzy of cleaning. She rearranged Amos's nursery, tidied forgotten cupboards, thriftily separated from her linen chest those sheets and pillow covers that could be darned into reuse. Taking a leaf out of her aunt's domestic Bible, she subjected Rashid Ali to several hours of relentless stock-taking in the kitchen store-rooms, leaving him perplexed and considerably disgruntled.
By tea time on Sunday she had exhausted both her energy reserves and her domestic chores, but she was still restless. Estelle had been of great assistance in relieving the load of her self-inflicted duties, but now she was out and not expected until after supper. Olivia rejected another call on Kinjal, regardless of temptation. Kinjal's serene logic would again try to soften her resolve, and Olivia was tired, so tired, of dialectics!
The demolitions were to start early tomorrow morning. Still Raventhorne had not made any move! Olivia's earlier confidence was fast eroding, her brain seething with fresh doubts. Had he seen through her bluff and decided to call it? Was he planning some last-minute trick that she had not foreseen? Or, could it be that despite Estelle's valiant melodramatics, he simply did not care whether or not those miserable quarters were pulled down?
No. Resolutely Olivia checked her irrational doubts. Jai Raventhorne did care. He would never allow her to destroy the disreputable husk that had once housed his mother, which to him still embodied her spirit, and was the cradle in which he had been nurtured. It meant that he would make his move tonight. Or not at all!
"I'm going to the Templewood house again, Mary. That sweeper has not yet disinfected the drains and they stink. There is no need to order the carriage, I'll walk. I need the exercise." In her eagerness to expend restless energy, Olivia almost ran out of the house.
The extensive park land across which she had ridden so often fronted the Birkhurst mansion and enjoyed great popularity as an avenue for recreation. Early showers of the monsoons had washed away layers of dust and given the nascent grass the look of a lime green carpet. Children frolicked with armies of ayahs and nannies in exasperated attendance, their parents probably out on the Strand enjoying more adult pleasures. Those who preferred exercise to social chit-chat on the Strand took brisk constitutionals across the park, marching in rhythm as if preparing for a military parade. Smartly outfitted army men from Fort William, contained within the extensive park land, cantered on superbly brushed horses and looked very superior to those unfortunate enough to be on foot. It had been a long time since Olivia had walked across the park. There were many surprised glances as gents doffed their hats and ladies avoided looking at her stomach. Some halted to exchange a few pleasantries, and one or two men from the business district were bold enough to probe cautiously about the hotel.
It was a cool, breezy evening with a fine mist of sporadic rain from scattered clouds that hovered uncertainly overhead. No doubt it would rain more decisively during the night. The leisuredly amble considerably helped to settle Olivia's mind. She felt better for the exercise, her brain clearer. The day-watchman was not yet off duty at the Templewood bungalow. He greeted her unexpected visit with surprise tempered with relief, glad that he had returned when he had from a surreptitious smoke with his cronies around the corner. No, he said, the sweeper was no longer on the premises and yes, he would personally supervise the cleaning of the drains in the morning. Had there been any visitors, any messages? A letter, perhaps? Stoutly he shook his head, swearing that he had been on guard every minute and there had been no one and nothing.
She knew she would have to wait.
Vagrant footsteps and a wandering mind took Olivia aimlessly in the direction of the cook-house. She unlocked the door and went inside, not knowing why or what it was she sought. With no Babulal, no Rehman, no bands of frisky scullery boys, the kitchen looked desolate. There were lathers of black cobwebs everywhere and termites had again mounted assaults on her aunt's sacrosanct larder, the marauding lines of insects at one time considered a calamity of major proportions. The larder itself, scene of so many hot skirmishes between cook and mistress, was as bare as Mother Hubbard's cupboard.
Through the soot- and oil-encrusted wire mesh at the window, Olivia gazed steadily across the deserted wastes of the servants' quadrangle. Long, shadowy fingers crept over it to make a vibrant patchwork of vermilion light and shade. A touch of setting sun turned a heap of rubble into something exotic and unfamiliar. In the mournful silence a pair of geckos chased each other or some choice insect across a kitchen wall with their plaintive cry of satti, satti, satti, which the Indians, in their zeal to philosophise everything, interpreted as truth, truth, truth.
Out in the compound against an umbral back-drop, something moved. It might have been a rat or a stray cat or dog or, indeed, merely a trick of the changing light. But it wasn't. Every muscle in Olivia's body tensed; her shallow breathing deepened into rasps, her heart bolted into gallops. Even without being able to see clearly, her every instinct told her that she was not about to be disappointed. At last, Jai Raventhorne had arrived to strike his bargain.
His bargain but on her terms!
CHAPTER 21
She had not been face to face with him since their encounter in his office. But in a business environment as close knit as in Calcutta, her awareness of his presence was constant. Through the window of her office she had often distinguished the sound of Shaitan's hooves as they thundered past the Farrowsham main entrance, for Raventhorne's day, like hers, started early. Sometimes she had seen him striding along the wharf with that eternal impatience with which he announced his contempt for the world. Once in a while in the early morning she had even heard his voice in all its deep-timbred richness as he read some unfortunate Customs official his fortune, for at that time of day voices carried clearly. In whatever situation she had observed him covertly, it was always he who was in control of it, his authority not for a moment in question.
This was not so now. The picture Jai Raventhorne presented to Olivia in the filtered light of impending dusk was very different. Head slung low between hunched shoulders, he sat on an upturned bucket carelessly left behind by one of the workmen. In one hand he held a twig with which he doodled on
the soil around his feet. His elbows were balanced on his knees. Cast downward, his eyes stared at nothing in particular but with unmoving intensity. There was now no sign of the conceit, the hauteur that was such an integral part of his bearing. Save for his right wrist as he doodled, he was still. He had no suspicion of being watched.
The taste in Olivia's mouth was suddenly nectarine sweet. With careful cat treads she stepped out of the kitchen house to glide silently down the court-yard at his back. Keeping to the darkening verandahs that ran alongside the quarters, she positioned herself as close to him as she could without attracting his notice. A few fat drops of rain plopped down from a visiting cloud; glancing upward, he pulled up the collar of his shirt but otherwise ignored them. In the fractional lift of his head he had revealed his face. It looked harrowed. The taste in Olivia's mouth turned even sweeter.
Softly she called out, "I was expecting you earlier. What took you so long?"
His back straightened. Were it not for the hush of the dusk, she might have altogether missed the hiss with which he pulled in his breath. She sauntered past him unhurriedly and strolled towards the doorway upon which she knew all his energies were concentrated. He remained seated and stared blankly, without recognition, as if tangled in some distant dream not yet shaken off. She had surprised him in a moment of intense privacy: It was on a pilgrimage that he had come. How fortuitous the timing of her own visit!
With a finger-nail Olivia scraped off some splinters from the door jamb. "Ugh! Eaten hollow by termites. It's worse inside, believe me."
He still did not speak. But in the saffron blaze of the dying sun his expression changed. He rose, walked away and turned his back upon her.
"Would you like to see inside for yourself? You will not again have the opportunity. Tomorrow all this comes down, every brick, every roof tile, every last rotten beam." She laughed under her breath. "No? Well, please yourself. My offer of inspection remains until the morning."
His back was like a wall, hard and unbending. She could read fury in its every line and contour. Slicked with sweat, his forearms glistened and in the eerie light that dusk brings they looked metallic. She knew that if he were to turn now, his face would be ravaged. But then he did turn and she was disappointed. He had reconstituted his face into such emptiness that she felt cheated. Raw emotion dispensed with, he loosened as he confronted her.
"Don't be tricked into complacency by a few cheap victories, Olivia." He spoke almost gently. "You will not be able to fight me."
"You think not? And why, might I ask, such an odd delusion?"
"I know not. Unlike you, I am unencumbered by a conscience."
"No longer! In your admirable tutelage I have also unloaded that unwanted appendage. The rules I too follow now are my own. I devise, I improvise. Like you I too have made a fine art of the rule of thumb." Olivia's voice rang with confidence, but how she hated that minimal quaver she always felt in his presence!
"Indeed!" He smiled and leaned against a pillar. "Street dogs fight very craftily, Olivia. They attack from unexpected directions, which is how they survive as a beleaguered breed."
"Not every street dog wins every fight. Sometimes crafty mongrels too can be outwitted. And as tutor you have already seen how fast I learn!"
"True. But then, a cutting tongue and a bag of wily, childish tricks are not all that are needed in the game, Olivia. You are still vulnerable, although in your brashness you fail to see it, and there are areas of your mind that are still freely accessible to me." His manner was casual. Obviously he did not take her seriously.
"No longer that either!" she countered sharply. "Don't underestimate me now, Jai, as you once did. The mind you think you know exists now in quite another form. Don't misinterpret it."
"Perhaps it always existed in quite another form! I sometimes wonder if I have not always misinterpreted it." He raised a quizzical eyebrow and walked past her into the quarter in which he had once lived. To her astonishment, he reemerged a moment later carrying a pipe and a pouch of tobacco. Olivia felt a small sense of shock; he was used to coming here, perhaps during the hours of night when there would be no risk of exposure. In his audacity, he had stored his belongings in some crevice remembered from his childhood. She felt her skin start to tingle. How foolish of her to have doubted her own instincts or, indeed, his!
"Whatever the misinterpretations, they were mutual," she snapped. "One could say even mutually beneficial."
"And, in your case, also material and tangible! You did well out of your marriage. A pity your husband appears to have benefitted somewhat less, apart from the carnal pleasures of having sired two infants." He took his time lighting his pipe, no longer uneasy in her presence, unconcerned that he had tacitly informed her of his nocturnal visits to the quadrangle in which they stood.
"But then whoredom brings its own benefits to some men," she retorted, hating his nonchalance, his unruffled calm, because she could not fathom it. "And I have had the advantage of a highly skilled mentor!"
If Olivia had hoped for the reward of at least a flinch, of some gratifying sign of inner bleeding, she was disappointed again. The brazen reference did not even graze his skin. "You flatter me surely," was all he murmured with a trace of humour but none of embarrassment. "Had the tutorials been better skilled, the Golden Behind might not have earned all those fat bills Donaldson never tired of paying."
It was she who flushed and was furious that she had, but she was glad he had said that. It swept aside the remaining debris from her path, made her task easier. "Whatever Freddie's faults, he is a man of honour, a gentleman, twice the man you could ever aspire to be!"
He arched an eyebrow. "Is that why he separates himself from you by half a world? A curious reward for such touching loyalty!" He mocked her with a laugh, but then, all at once, he seemed to tire of the pointless game, of its barbs and lances and futile verbal jousting. With a gesture of exasperation, he spun on a heel and walked away from her. "Why the hell are you still here, Olivia?" he asked wearily. "Why are you also not half a damned world away with this man who is twice what I can ever aspire to be?"
"If my presence disturbs you, that is justification enough! For the rest, it is my business."
"I don't really give a damn where you are." Still no heat, only persisting fatigue. "Your presence is a nuisance, no more, no less." Outside the verandah it had started to rain. A few drops leaked through a crack in the ceiling and made a puddle on the floor. He stood and stared at it fixedly. "I wish you would go, Olivia. England, Hawaii, anywhere. We are unequal adversaries."
Olivia had once prided herself on knowing all his moods in all their subtle shadings. But tonight, she could not recognise any of them. It seemed that nothing she had said had truly touched him. Even his stinging insults had been lazily dispensed, devoid of anger. Not even the fact of her all too obvious pregnancy invoked those familiar expressions of disgust. As he had done so many times before in another age, he had merely removed himself mentally from her reach. And she had allowed herself to be distracted from her purpose.
"We shall see about that," she said shortly. "In the meantime I would like to know why you are on my property without my permission. I presume you trespass with a purpose?"
He puffed thoughtfully at his pipe and dug one hand deep in a pocket. "You still play with toys that are not toys, but your games now are dangerous. You could be badly hurt." He did not answer her question.
"Nothing in my life could hurt me badly again." It was not what she should have said, but having said it she persisted. "Yes, you did have the power to hurt me once, Jai. Once. You don't have it anymore. Nor ever will again."
"And you are certain of that?"
"Entirely! To act outside the rules is not a monopoly, and my skin too is now toughened. No, you will not be able to hurt me again. If you try, you will be disappointed."
It was almost dark. Heavy footsteps sounded in the gathering gloam at the far end of the court-yard. A flickering, lemon light approached,
a lantern carried towards them by the night-watchman. He salaamed, placed the lantern on the ledge between them and withdrew.
"I think you must know that I cannot allow you to demolish these."
Olivia's breath quickened. At last, he nibbled! "And you must know that you cannot stop me!"
"What you mount for my benefit is a charade. Once again you make a fool of yourself, this time with even more pointless bravado."
"Do I?" Her eyes glinted with amber light. "You forget these worthless ruins mean nothing to me. I will raze them to the ground with no compunction whatsoever."
"And you consider they mean something to me?"
Olivia shrugged. "If they do, your interest is incidental."
"Oh, no," he said softly, "my interest to you is vital! You are indeed a fast learner: I compliment you on your efforts at blackmail."
"Blackmail?" Olivia threw him an amused smile. "What a curious notion! I didn't invite you here, you arrived of your own accord."
"Which, of course, surprises you?" he inquired casually. Noticing his pipe had gone cold, he tucked it into his belt and crossed his arms. "Mooljee has been sounding the drum hard to tout your hotel hoax. Why not? Your collateral adds power to his lungs. But what if I told you to go ahead and build your hotel, that your little charade does not impress me? That you may pull down these worthless ruins if you wish with my blessings, what then?"
