A Dark and Distant Shore (100 page)

Gideon smiled to himself. It was refreshing to hear from Theo. Vilia wrote occasionally, but her letters in the years since Lizzie died – and before, now he thought about it – had been rather impersonal, while Shona’s were a conscientious chronicle of small beer.

There had been two or three notes from Juliana, written on the voyage, but nothing since. Two or three? Two, to be exact. The first one had come at the beginning of May, just before the battle of Bareilly, and had expressed her dutiful thanks for all he had done for her. Her guard had slipped only once, when she wrote, ‘I wish that everyone on the ship was less well informed about my misfortunes, and less oppressively kind to me.’ On the second occasion, Gideon had been prostrate with sunstroke in one of Rose’s field hospitals; despite the gruelling June heat, the British had just captured the fortress of Gwalior. She had written, ‘I have learned now to defend myself against the sympathy I don’t deserve. Looking back, I know that Richard’s and little Luke’s deaths must both be laid at my door. Richard died coming to save
me,
and the baby died because I didn’t know how to save
him.
The burden of that knowledge is enough; what sympathy does is heap more guilt upon me. The ship docks tomorrow, and the most important episode in my life is over. And my life itself, in the only way that matters. I don’t care very much about anything, any more. Thank you again, Gideon dear. And don’t worry about me.’

Gideon, with a headache of staggering proportions, had wept for her. When he recovered, he had written begging her not to think in such terms, and had wondered at intervals during the months since then whether there was any significance in the fact that she didn’t reply.

It was November now, and he was at Allahabad, where the governor-general had just read out, to a predominantly British audience, a long and faintly illiterate royal proclamation. India had been fought over, and won, and ruled for a hundred years by a company of merchants, the Honourable East India Company. But now no more. The British Crown, carefully refraining from any suggestion that the Company had made a hash of things, was taking over.

The proclamation was couched in antique language that probably dated back five hundred years. Gideon shook his head; one wouldn’t have thought this was the second half of the nineteenth century. He must remember to quote some of the better bits when he wrote back to Theo.

The smile was still on his face when he began reading again.

Yes, dear boy, I
am
about to get to the point. A few weeks ago, I found myself trapped over the brandy decanter by Magnus, who has tried everyone’s patience to the uttermost on the subject of Juliana’s misfortunes, though I don’t believe he has the remotest idea of what the poor girl has been through. He is, as usual, irksomely repetitive, alternating between distraction over the loss of his grandson, and criticism of Vilia who, he claims, wilfully encouraged Juliana to leave for the graveyard of the British (how
weary
I am of that phrase!) in the face of all his own cogently stated objections. One would think, to hear him, that Juley herself hadn’t had a word to say in the matter. Anyway, after he had moaned for an hour in the most maudlin way imaginable about who was going to look after his little girl when he has gone – as, with his customary pessimism, he expects to do any day now – I felt the least I could do was volunteer.

When Gideon’s mind began to function again, his heart was beating like a trip hammer and his hands were shaking. With difficulty he focused his eyes.

She has, you know, always been inclined to run to me when in trouble, and as Vilia says with monotonous frequency – she seems to have picked up the habit of repetition from the old man! – it
is
time I was married.

‘A few weeks ago,’ the letter said, and it had taken another two months from the date of writing for it to reach Allahabad.

Also, it seems to me that Juliana ought to be removed from Kinveil. I hadn’t realized that, during the year before her ill-judged marriage, she and Vilia hadn’t been on the most amicable terms. Vilia herself agrees that, deeply though she feels for the child, it would be unthinkable for them both to live permanently at Kinveil. ‘One should never go back,’ she said to me the other day. ‘It is always a mistake to go back, to situations, or places, or – or people.’ I
wonder
what she meant by that?

My suggestion cheered the old man up a good deal. I am, after all, very nearly the only one of his connections of whom he unequivocally approves; he has even been gracious enough, on occasion, to commend my wisdom in staying single. You, I may say, are not at all in his good books, despite your services to Juley. All this gadding about, when you should be settled down here at home like a sober, God-fearing citizen!

Need I say that the question of who should inherit Kinveil, after the unfortunate demise of Luke the Second, exercises what he calls his mind very seriously. He is most anxious for a replacement as soon as possible; several, for preference.

Gideon had never known whether Theo was as heartless as his conversation and letters often made him sound. It wasn’t lack of sensitivity; he was far too perceptive for that to be the explanation. And it was more than just his particular brand of cleverness.

So there it is. My affianced bride is not – alas for my vanity! – delirious with joy over our approaching nuptials, but neither am I. On the other hand, neither of us has anyone else in mind, and she seems content enough. So we will do our best to provide Magnus with what he so badly wants. Vilia, too. For Kinveil’s heir to have Cameron blood in his veins, dear boy! All her ambitions will be realized! As far as I am concerned, marriage will be a new experience, and, as you know, I always find new experiences stimulating.

It had all been settled, then. Gideon felt sick to his heart. He remembered how relieved he had been to see Theo flirting with Gaby Savarin at that damned dinner party of Shona’s, because, at the time, he had seemed dangerously friendly with the muscular, monosyllabic young man who did the smithing at Kinveil. Still searching for the stimulus of brutality, Gideon had wondered, or something more? But Gaby hadn’t meant anything, and in the autumn of ’54 there had been the awkward business with – what was his name? Dominic Harvey? – the art critic with whom Lavinia had been smitten. Gideon had drawn the inevitable conclusion. But surely even Theo, with his Olympian self-interest, wouldn’t embark on marriage – and marriage with
Juliana
–
unless he were capable? And prepared. Was it possible that his relationships with the blacksmith and Harvey had really been no more than what people nowadays had begun to call ‘passionate friendships’?

It would take six weeks at least to get a message home by overland route saying, ‘Stop!’ If only,
if only
there were something like the new Atlantic Telegraph to connect London with Calcutta as quickly as with New York!

And then he read on and discovered that it was already too late.

We have set October eighteenth as the date. Juliana has no recollection of the weeks between the first and second reliefs of Lucknow, so there is no danger of precipitating an emotional crisis over the anniversary. Incidentally, I have had to be exceedingly careful to prevent her from seeing any of the appalling epics that have been pouring from the pens of our poets about the Mutiny in general and Lucknow in particular. Have you seen Mr Tennyson’s latest? It scans with difficulty and rhymes only – presumably! – if one has that gentleman’s rather thick Lincolnshire accent. He claims that they kept the flag flying all through the siege? Did they, do you know? Juliana doesn’t.

Yes, I
am
straying from the point. Put it down to the natural diffidence of a forty-four-year-old bachelor about to embark on matrimony with a chit of twenty-one. And don’t look like that, dear boy! We all have our sensitive spots. I imagine the great day will have passed by the time this reaches you, and will therefore take your fraternal good wishes for granted.

Now, what else has been happening that I ought to cram into my remaining space?

Gideon found he couldn’t read any more for a time. Blankly, he sat and gazed from the window at a scene little changed since Juliana and he had frittered away the weeks, almost a year before, waiting for the steamer to take them down to Calcutta. Desolate still, with the great castle of Akbar brooding over the burnt-out ruins that the Mutiny had left, although they had already been softened a little by the sun, and the scavengers, and the monsoon rains.

He knew, even while he denied Juliana the same bitter comfort, what it meant to feel one had failed the people one loved. He had failed Elinor because he had seen no need to gallop hell-for-leather by her side, and remind her that her mare wouldn’t jump water. He had failed Lizzie, and she had died from a drug she mightn’t have needed to take if he had not been too preoccupied with other people to give her the support she needed. And he had failed Juliana herself, because he had chosen not to sail home with her, where he might have protected her from a marriage that could only be disastrous. Suddenly, he remembered Vilia saying to him just after Elinor died, ‘You love your daughter, but don’t try to persuade us that you would consider abandoning, or even adjusting, your career for her.’ The same hadn’t been true –
surely
it hadn’t been true – in the case of Juliana, despite the little voice in his head that, telling him she would be better on her own, had also told him that he must remember his duty to the
Times-Graphic,
especially now that his friend and arch-rival, Billy Russell of
The Times,
had just landed in India. Surely he hadn’t been as selfish as that? Not this time. Not with Juliana.

Eventually, he dropped his eyes to Theo’s concluding paragraphs. Guy Savarin had become a chloral addict, ‘which should put a period to his existence before very long; he still tries to paint, but the virtue has gone out of him.’ Ian Barber and his wife now had three children, all models of what children should be except that they were all girls; ‘
so
frustrating for them. Vilia made the tactical error of remarking in Magnus’s presence that Ian is becoming intolerably sanctimonious; it has shown rather strongly of late in his views on our entry into the armaments business. But Magnus, devoted to Britain’s imperial adventures and thus, one might expect, to any weapon that can enforce them, promptly forgot everything in his desire to put Vilia in her place. Ian, he said, was a thoroughly responsible young fellow. Such a pity Magnus doesn’t know the meaning of consistency. He never learns anything, and never forgets anything.’

Peregrine James, it seemed, was developing the most astonishing resemblance to Perry Randall, ‘for which excellent reason, Magnus can’t stand him. Vilia can’t, either, but I won’t expand on that. Personally, I can’t imagine Perry ever looking down his pompous young nose at people in the way P.J. does.’

And, finally, Lavinia. Gideon frowned. ‘She is soon to marry a very good friend of mine, Dominic Harvey, who was also a friend of Guy’s in their salad days. An intriguing match, which I pride myself on having helped to bring about. With Dominic a true aesthete and Lavinia such a dashing and down-to-earth girl, I can hardly wait to see what they produce in the way of little Harveys. If any.’

That was all, and it was enough. Oh, Juliana. Juliana!

‘Juley, you aren’t paying attention!’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘No. There’s all the difference in the world between hearing what I am saying and
listening
to what I am saying! Do wake up, for goodness’ sake.’

Lavinia hadn’t changed at all in more than three years of marriage to her art critic, although her face, always a little too sharp for prettiness, had become even thinner and her manner more decided. ‘I have something very particular to say to you. Is Theo out? Because I warn you, if he comes strolling in and tries to condescend to me in that way he has, I shall probably do him an injury.’

‘He’s out. I shouldn’t think he will be back till late. He seldom is.’

With a sound that came perilously near a snort, Lavinia removed her hat and placed it with care on a side table, where it sat like a black velvet flowerpot full of exotic pink blooms. ‘It’s a pet of a hat, isn’t it?’ she said pleasedly. ‘I do like these new little ones, so much more flattering than the boring great bonnets we used to wear. And look, Juley! Have you noticed my new crinoline? It’s quite the latest, and this slightly flattened front does wonders for one’s waistline. See? You really must get one. You’re much too tiny ever to look your best in what we’ve been wearing these last few years.’

What Lavinia lacked in beauty, she made up in style, and her taste was excellent. Her new crinoline supported a charming white gown bordered with a Greek key design in black velvet, its skirt looped up to reveal a pleated petticoat in a soft cerise colour. Juliana’s interest in clothes was tepid, although Theo had twice taken her to Paris to buy from M. Worth, the new French royal dressmaker. She said dutifully, ‘Yes, Lavvy. I like that swept-back effect, but, you know, M. Worth’s skirts are wider than ever this spring.’

‘Pooh! What does that matter? We’ve copied the French quite long enough, even if M. Worth
is
English!’ She giggled. ‘And if he is responsible for that gown you’re wearing, he should be ashamed of himself. I grant you that the ribbon interlacing is becoming, but the colour!’

‘It matches my eyes!’

‘That’s what I’m complaining about.
So
commonplace. And why do you have that horrid piece of lace on your head? It makes you look quite frumpish.’

Juliana sighed. ‘Oh, Lavinia! You know perfectly well that most respectable married ladies wear caps, and unlike you I don’t
want
to be different.’

‘Pooh!’ Lavinia said again. ‘How spiritless! Who cares about “most” married ladies? Vilia has never worn one, and it hasn’t stopped
her
from reaching the impeccably respectable heights of great-grandmotherhood.’ She stopped. It was a ticklish point. One never quite knew how Juley was going to react to even the most incidental references to motherhood. Not that she ever went off into a fit of tears, but she sometimes became even more self-contained than usual – which, in her cousin’s view, was a remarkable, and quite undesirable, achievement. Lavinia, in fact, was very worried about her, and wasn’t looking forward at all to what she had come to say. She wished she could have talked to someone else first, but couldn’t think of anyone. Her mother was too innocent, her father would have been outraged, Jermyn was four hundred miles away at the foundry, and Peregrine James was far too wrapped up in himself. To write to Vilia would have been to invite an extremely arbitrary reply, and there were excellent reasons why she couldn’t discuss things with her husband or Uncle Theo. It was a very great pity that Gideon was still in China. Such a
busy
place, what with Arrow wars, and Opium wars, and
coups d’état,
and now the Taiping rebellion.