Ryman, Rebecca

by Olivia

  The parting, so close, so final, was painful for them both. But, swallowing her heartache Kinjal ventured to ask, "The only one?"

  The spark in Olivia's dark, golden eyes died. "Yes. The only one."

  "Olivia, you once told me that as recompense for the gratitude your uncle expressed to you, you had asked for a favour in kind. If I have indeed been this sanctuary, then would you consider such a favour for me?" Knowing what might be coming, Olivia turned away. "Before you sail for Hawaii, would you allow Jai to be with his son once more?"

  Trembling, Olivia shook her head. "No!"

  "I know that you have closed your mind to the subject, but that does not make it go away," Kinjal persisted. "Admit it or not, Jai acted with honour. Having been through it yourself, can you not imagine his self-denial, the extent of his sense of loss? He need not have suffered it—certainly, none of us believed that he would. By denying himself so severely, don't you think he has earned at least this meagre privilege?"

  Panic fluttered across Olivia's face, making it even paler. Weakly, she hid herself behind her fan. "I cannot risk it, Kinjal. You must see that I cannot. He relented once, he might not the next time."

  "You still cannot trust him?"

  "I have steeled myself to live without one son, but it Amos also goes...!" Scabs peeled themselves off old wounds, making them bleed anew. How she hated Kinjal for forcing her to face herself again!

  "Jai will never hurt you again."

  "No, he will never again have the chance to!" Confused, shaken, pulsating with those pains that would now always be with her, Olivia stumbled to her feet and ran out of the room.

  Kinjal abandoned the argument as worthless. As far as Jai Raventhorne was concerned, Olivia was still beyond the bounds of reason.

  There comes a time when even pain becomes a habit. Left by herself in the aftermath of everyone's departure—Alistair's departure!—Olivia plunged into a trough of depression. Her love for Amos was consuming, but it could not reduce the enormousness of her loss any more than one limb can compensate for the amputation of another. The abundance of her grief frightened her; it was bottomless. Amos would now never play with the one who had also occupied her womb. She herself would forever stay in ignorance of Alistair's features, never see her own reflection in them, always wondering, wondering. Nor would he know or love the mother who had almost exchanged her life for his and then given him away like an unwanted bundle donated to charity. Would he understand? Could he ever? The flesh on his bones was hers; it was her blood that nourished his veins. Yet, their destinies would unfold on opposite sides of the globe, neither touching nor transfusing. Passing by on the same street, they would not recognise each other, forever strangers. Over the years they would perhaps teach themselves to think of each other as dead. But for now, it was as if she had consigned his infant body to earth as a living entity . . .

  How could she not still hate Jai Raventhorne?

  Arthur Ransome returned from Cawnpore. Abandoning all courtly formality he gathered Olivia in his arms. "Oh my dear child, my poor, dear child . . ." He could say no more.

  Against the comfort of his shoulders, cushioned in the warmth of his unquestioning love, she wept. "I have missed you. Oh, how I have missed you!"

  "Yes, I know. Estelle told me everything. Had it not been for . . . circumstances, I would have returned earlier. But I could not force myself to do so." Awkwardly, he patted her back, still gruff with sorrow.

  She was ashamed of her selfishness. He too had suffered a crippling loss; he was not yet over it. He too needed to be solaced. needed to learn to live with the disability of an amputation. Drying her own tears, Olivia set aside her grief to share in his. They talked of Sir Joshua, of the early days in Canton, the halcyon years when they were young and immortal and invincible. They talked for hours, salving Ransome's wounds with the magic balm of memories. Eventually, they even laughed, for it was inevitable that they should also talk about Hal Lubbock, his unorthodoxies and the business that now flourished.

  They did not talk of Jai Raventhorne.

  Finally, Ransome sobered again. "Was it wise, my dear, to send your child to Freddie in such infancy?" If he was unhappy about her broken marriage, this act of cruel self-denial he had not been able to understand at all.

  "Wise or not, it has been a worthy division," Olivia replied with forced lightness. "You see, now we have one son each." Engrossed in arranging a bowl of exquisite pink roses from her garden, she sounded casual.

  Too casual. He now knew her well enough not to be misled by her façades. "Hal told me about those quarters. You stayed the demolitions, I believe."

  "Yes. They didn't seem like such a good idea after all."

  "And the hotel? Market rumour has it that you've shelved the project indefinitely. I must say I was surprised."

  Olivia smiled. The cunning old coot, he was not surprised at all! "I haven't quite made up my mind yet."

  He let the lie pass. "And what will you do with the property if you do decide to abandon your project?"

  She snipped off another stem and stood back to examine the arrangement through squinted eyes. "I'm not sure. Perhaps sell it. I think you are aware of the marriage portion that Aunt Bridget was kind enough to give me." Ransome nodded. "The money should have gone to my mother, but she rejected it. Over the years the funds have accumulated considerable interest with Lloyd's of London. Half of those funds have now been transferred here so that I could clear all my loans. To be honest, I have no need for more money, but neither do I have any need now for the Templewood property. I am therefore tempted to rid myself of it one way or another. Would you have any objections if I . . . gave it away?"

  He looked startled. "My dear, you are its sole owner! You are free to do with it what you wish. But—give it away to whom? Some worthy educational or charitable institution?"

  "Something like that."

  They shared a silent meal, talk of the Templewood house having now dampened their abortive forays into inconsequentialities. Sweet-sour remembrances again made them morose as spectres walked freely about their minds, reviving long-forgotten incidents. Chains of thoughts forged in the past brought into focus fresh links still too new to ignore. Inevitably, Ransome brought up the subject they had been skirting so carefully all evening.

  "There are some rather strange rumours about regarding Jai Raventhorne. Perhaps you have already heard them?"

  "No. I no longer involve myself with business matters." Then, because she could not suppress the question, she blurted out, "What kind of rumours?"

  "They say he is pulling out from Calcutta."

  In the act of pouring the coffee, Olivia's hand stilled. "Pulling out?"

  "Yes. That is to say, he is said to be turning over Trident to Ranjan Moitra." He accepted the cup she offered and stared at her hard. "The consensus is that he has not been able to stomach his humiliation at the hands of . . . Farrowsham. He's lost too much face to be able to show what's left of it in the business district."

  Olivia rose abruptly from the table and picked up the pair of secateurs with which she had been trimming the rose stems. "And do you subscribe to that too?"

  "No." His hard look turned sharper. "Jai might be a bad loser, but he doesn't give a fig for public opinion. He might be foolishly sentimental on occasion, but he is not a weakling. One reverse would not make him renounce everything he has struggled over years to achieve. There is some other explanation for his surprising decision." His eyes bored deeper. "From Estelle I learned about this . . . extraordinary kidnapping of your son. Could it perhaps have something to do with that?"

  She managed to look successfully surprised. "No, of course not. Why should it?"

  "Yes, why should it?" he echoed. "I was hoping you might be able to answer that. It was a dastardly act, no matter what the provocation. I confess, I was shocked, quite shocked, that Jai could have turned his villainy towards an innocent child."

  With a cluck of irritation, Olivia pulled out all the ros
es from the bowl and angrily started to rearrange them. "He killed his father as surely as if he had pulled that trigger himself, destroyed Aunt Bridget's life, sought to demolish that of an innocent half sister—and you still say that you are shocked?" She laughed.

  "His hatred against them was justified," Ransome said with quiet stubbornness. "For what he did to poor deluded Josh I will never perhaps find the generosity to forgive Jai—but, in all conscience, he was not the sole perpetrator."

  "Maybe he considers his hatred against me justified too!"

  "No doubt. But what justifies your excessive hatred against him, Olivia . . .?" he inquired softly.

  He had never approached this, her tallest barrier. But Olivia knew that he was aware that it existed. Still not prepared to lower all barricades, she shrugged and answered with marked coldness, "The justifications are self-evident. He has damaged beyond repair many whom I too loved."

  Reminded of his own severe losses, he turned morose again. "He too is damaged beyond repair, Olivia. I somehow sense it. Jai, it seems, has disappeared. At least, no one at Trident is willing to reveal his whereabouts even if they do know them. His houses are padlocked, many of his personal staff have been dispatched back to their villages. The Ganga sailed in yesterday but he has not been aboard. The gossip about his vanishing act gets more bizarre by the day. Pennworthy tells me there was little else talked about at the Chamber meeting yesterday." He hesitated as if about to add something more but then changed his mind and fell silent.

  The roses finally arranged to her satisfaction, Olivia picked up the delicate Wedgwood bowl and placed it at the centre of the dining table at which Ransome still sat nursing his coffee.

  "Well, if he has disappeared," she said with studied indifference, "let us hope this time the disappearance is permanent."

  At last I abandon India! Olivia wrote in her long-forgotten diary. I shed my shackles. The banyan tree can throw down no more roots.

  The black leather-bound diary had once been her constant companion, her nightly confidant. But now, for almost two years, it had lain discarded in a bottom drawer and rediscovered only during the assiduous process of cleaning. In her sudden surge of liberation, Olivia again felt the need to share her sense of release with someone, anyone, even a lifeless notebook.

  The George Washington, Willie Donaldson assured her with great relief, was a modern vessel, a clipper that plied under an American flag with an American captain and crew. It was well provisioned, had comfortable living space and plenty of portholes for fresh air in the cabins. The vessel was scheduled to dock in Calcutta harbour sometime within the next two weeks. She would then sail shortly for the Pacific and touch Honolulu in record time. With her own affairs already more or less in order, there was little left for Olivia to do except to finalise the appointment of a suitable governess for Amos. Most of the inventories had been completed in the mansion, the strong-rooms sealed and locked, and the neatly labelled bunches of keys handed over to Donaldson for safe keeping. This time she had bowed to his wishes; the mansion would not be let and some of the old retainers would remain to see to its maintenance.

  "Surely, one of the bairns will want to return some day and enjoy the rewards of Caleb's endeavours," he had protested in support of his bid to preserve the sanctity of the manse. Olivia had not argued. Yes, perhaps one day Alistair would return to India. She had no right to tamper with his inheritance. Now there remained only the problem of the Birkhurst jewellery to be settled. But that, Olivia decided, she would tackle later.

  The girl who appealed most to her as Amos's new governess was a young Anglo-Indian called by the veritable mouthful of Bathsheba Smith Featherstonehaugh, "pronounced," she proudly told Olivia, "Fanshawe." The girl came with excellent references from Cornelia Donaldson's sister-in-law in Bombay and was said to be well versed in both child care and household duties. Besides, she was pert, placid and neat, and Olivia liked her infectious smile. Her father, she said, had been an adjutant to a commanding officer in Poona. He had died during the Afghan War. Her mother, whose nationality was obvious from the girl's walnut complexion, had died of the pox soon after. "But I have a grandmother in Newcastle," she said, thrilled at the prospect of a voyage overseas. "She's English, you know. Just like my father was."

  "And what do you consider yourself to be?" Olivia asked.

  She was surprised at the question. "Why, English, of course. Why else should I be wanting to go home?"

  That what she thought to be "home" was half a globe away from Honolulu Olivia did not have the heart to tell her yet. But the girl's comment depressed her. Like Amos, she too was of two worlds. Or neither. And for twilight people like them, rejects from both worlds, there were not many options open. For them, however, a third world did exist—and that could only be America, already a mixture of many, and less cruel than most. She decided to hire the girl, shortening her name instantly to Sheba.

  It was only after Olivia had finished assigning her new duties to Sheba and writing down for her the child's routine through the day that she suddenly noticed her diary still lying on the table. The breeze had riffled through its pages to reveal one where she had written just two sentences: Yesterday I met a man. I think I would like to meet him again. The few words, innocent and unaware, were the same she had once also written in a letter to her father. She had not known then that these innocuous words were destined to be the starting point of an odyssey begun more than two years ago, an odyssey only now being completed. Or, perhaps, being left uncompleted. My life is finished and yet unfinished. It was what her aunt had once said to her about herself. The analogy disturbed Olivia.

  Unthinkingly, before she was aware of what she was doing, she sat down to flick through the pages of the diary. Her account started excitedly on the day she had disembarked in Calcutta, with her awestruck admiration for the imposing man who was her uncle, with her first meeting with her aunt, with Estelle. As if hypnotised by her handwriting, Olivia re-read her initial impressions, her confusions, her desperate homesickness, her sporadic enthusiasms and irritations and excavations into a land so frightening in its strangeness. Among the cramped notations there was even mention of the intrepid young Englishman Courtenay (or Poultenay!) who had gone native and provoked her visit to the bazaar of the Chitpur Road. In between the writings the diary had many blank pages when she had been too tired or too restless to pen confidences. The last date on which she had written anything—everything!—was the day before Jai Raventhorne had sailed away on his Ganga with her cousin Estelle. And with her own future.

  The diary was a microcosm of her life in Calcutta, down to today's hasty words of celebration. In re-living that life vicariously through the pages, Olivia realised that she had made a terrifying mistake. Like a jammed drain slowly being unblocked, memories started to trickle through, then expand and gush. With the free flow swept a cascade of debris, forgotten flotsam and jetsam from a life that might never have been. Before she could stop the deluge, her mind flooded. Airless, she felt she was drowning, but then she began to float. In her state of somnambulance, she walked to her almirah to retrieve the sealed brown envelope that had been delivered to her with the return of Amos. Outraged, her mind screamed in protest, but the fingers that cracked open the seal were no longer hers, rebels against the frantic commands of her brain.

  Within the brown envelope was contained another, smaller and once white but now soiled and crumpled as if having passed through many hands over many months. Completing the process of her submersion, Olivia tore open the flap and withdrew the single sheet that reposed within. She read the handwriting of which she recognised every stroke, every curl.

  I once told you that I was weak, and you laughed. Reading this you will no longer doubt me. Were I not a coward, you would not have to suffer the pain of having to read these words in a letter. Instead, you would be circled within my arms, encompassed by my tenderness; your ear would be pressed to my heart, listening carefully to its language, to the sounds of love that are ab
ove speech, beyond hollow words, eloquent in their silence. I would not be begging forgiveness for the inadequacies of these pathetic sentences behind which I hide because I do not have the courage to face you. And somewhere within your own heart, I know, you would be assured that I love you in defiance of the dictates and limits of all reason.

  I take Estelle to England. Why? For these answers, which I do not have the strength to give you, you must go to Arthur Ransome, for he knows everything and more. I do what I do because I must. It is a ritual of exorcism that I perform. To deserve you, I must return to you undiseased. And return I will, my much loved one—that much I beg of you to believe. The pain I inflict on you I give to myself tenfold, but if, in your abundant generosity, you will continue to trust me, to tolerate even this that I have chosen to be, you will have fulfilled the hope that is the life force of this wretched man to whom you have already entrusted everything.

  Wherever I go, my beautiful innocent, you go with me, unseen and unheard but always there where I can reach out and touch you. Within six months I shall be back. You must be prepared to receive a man depleted by his loss of you, a man even less whole than he is now. In his supreme arrogance, he will believe that he is still loved. In his abject humbleness he will know it is not because he deserves but because you disburse with charitable forgiveness.

  I wound you, I make gross demands, I explain nothing. I ask of you a sacrifice you cannot understand. Shamelessly, I offer nothing in return except everything that I am and have, and a love far beyond measurable dimensions. I marvel at such pathetic recompense—can it ever be enough for you? Stark reason tells me that what I expect is a madness; selfish instinct comforts me that it is not. In my darkest hour I cling with awe to your reckless assurances, to your promise to trust me, no matter what. I carry you with me, always. I sail away but I also leave myself behind.