A Dark and Distant Shore (99 page)

It occurred to her, at last, that she hadn’t asked what he was doing here, but he said, ‘Never mind that. Are you going to be able to pack fairly quickly?’

‘Pack? Why?’

Could she possibly be imagining that Campbell had dispersed the mutineers, so that everyone could drift off, at will, after a round of social good-byes? In fact, the commander-in-chief’s only course of action was to evacuate the place, postponing the final confrontation with the mutineers until he was fully reinforced. And the evacuation was not going to be funny, because Campbell had to hold together a body of men strong enough to do battle, if necessary, with thousands of mutineers, while detailing a massive escort for the column of sick and wounded, women and children, from the Residency, a column that couldn’t, Gideon estimated, be less than a mile long, probably much more. There were few pack animals, few litters or bearers, and even fewer carriages, and no one knew whether the hundreds of people who had survived the siege would be strong enough to walk the first five, and most hazardous, miles.

‘Campbell wants to move everybody out, either tonight or tomorrow night, while the enemy is still disorganized and not expecting anything.’

Juliana, with a forlorn attempt at brightness, said, ‘Oh, I have nothing to pack. We can go this moment, if you like! I had only the gown I stood up in at first, and then that fell to pieces. So I wore Mrs Clark’s. She died, you know. And then, when... And then a few weeks ago Mrs Polehampton gave me this one. It doesn’t fit very well. Baby has two little dresses and a shawl. So, you see...’

‘Dammit!’ Gideon exclaimed. ‘I knew there was something else.’ And burrowing again in his satchel he produced a Cashmir shawl of exquisite beauty and workmanship. He had looted it because, if he didn’t, someone else would, and he had thought Juliana would like it.

He said, ‘I’ve never forgotten the look in your eyes at that dreadful family dinner party – during the Great Exhibition, do you remember? – when you had just seen your first Cashmir shawl, and were quite besotted with the idea of India, and elephants, and rajas wearing all their jewels. There you are. Something extra to pack!’

She fingered the shawl, her eyes filling with tears again. ‘I haven’t seen a raja all my time in India, and I don’t suppose I shall, now. Gideon, you are so good to me. It’s beautiful, far too beautiful. I look such a wreck.’

Leaning over, he smoothed out the lines on her brow with a tender forefinger. He didn’t say, ‘You’re being silly.’ He didn’t say, ‘You will never be less than beautiful to me.’ He said, ‘Well, do something about it, my pet.’

She had combed her hair, and rinsed the tears off her cheeks, and was smoothing her eyebrows into shape with a dampened finger when she said, ‘I must send a message to Dr Darby, to tell him you’re here and I am all right now. He had promised to take care of me on the way to Calcutta.’

It was now or never. ‘I understand he’s not – not feeling very fit. He’s been wounded.’

Her finger froze for a moment, and then she said, carefully smoothing the other brow, ‘He’ll die, I expect. He wants to, after what happened to his wife and baby at Cawnpore. He has no one to live for.’

Gideon’s eyes turned towards the baby, peacefully asleep after his orange juice and then back to Juliana. He felt a surge of fear for her.

He slept fitfully on the ground outside the Begum Kothi that night, because Juliana couldn’t bear for him to go beyond call, and neither could he, and they spent most of the next day talking, and drinking gallons of tea, and tidying the room. Gideon, who didn’t like tea very much, was feeling slightly awash, and wryly amused over the care Juliana was taking to leave everything neat and clean for the mutineers who would soon be moving in, though she didn’t seem to realize it.

There was a difficult moment when Juliana was packing her few possessions. Suddenly, staring at some stained and blotted pages of closely written paper, she exclaimed, ‘Oh, Gideon! Your beautiful diary – the one you gave me at Gravesend! I – I don’t know what’s happened to it. I wrote it all up very carefully, but it’s probably been destroyed by now. Your – your beautiful diary!’

Of all the ludicrous things to weep over! Summoning up his best imitation of Magnus, Gideon said grumpily, ‘Well, you’ll oblige me by taking more care of the shawl!’ It was touch and go for a moment, and then her tears changed into a watery giggle.

She put the papers in his hand. ‘I haven’t written anything since... I haven’t written... Anyway, you might as well have the notes I kept for the first few weeks. They’re rather dirty, but I don’t suppose it’s of any consequence.’

They reached Calcutta ten weeks later, after a journey that would live in Gideon’s memory for ever. The first ten days were a nightmare of heat and dust and enemy harassment, from which he was quite unable to shield Juliana, and after that they were beset by a constant succession of lesser alarms.

She couldn’t make the adjustment to being back in the world again. Gideon, watching her, knew there was nothing he could do except be there, tortured by the knowledge that she was discovering, at last, that having a strong male hand to cling to wasn’t always enough to set everything automatically to rights. Superficially, she was calm enough, submitting docilely to whatever arrangements he chose to make, but he could see that she was fighting her own personal battle, inside herself, and that because of the child, wasting away before their eyes, she wasn’t winning.

Without making an issue of it, he arranged for the baby to be seen by a succession of doctors, but they all shook their heads privately to him afterwards, and murmured something about the effects of long privation on the system of such a very young child. Blindly, Juliana insisted that he was improving a little – ‘for although he is weak, he is quite quiet, you know, and not in any kind of pain’. And Gideon, helplessly, tried to think of yet another way of phrasing the only possible answer, which was concerned with the beneficial properties of sea air.

On February tenth, he saw her on board the ship with the baby and the boxes of medicines and comforts and new clothes he had insisted on buying for her at the Auckland Hotel where, blessedly, there was a whole shopping mall complete with dressmaker, haberdasher, and provision dealer. Otherwise, she would have sailed with enough supplies for a whole army of children, and nothing for herself but the old black gown she stood up in.

The ship was to sail on the evening tide on the eleventh, but when Gideon, who was staying at the Bengal Club, went on board that morning, he heard that it had been postponed for twenty-four hours. He went down to Juliana’s cabin.

Mrs Polehampton, who was travelling home with her, was there when he entered. She was sitting with Juliana’s hand in hers – and she was saying, softly, ‘My dear, you must prepare yourself. The doctor says the baby is very ill.’

She meant well, no doubt, but when she looked up and caught Gideon’s eye, he knew that his own face, like Juliana’s, must be a stiff mask of rejection. She rose to her feet then, and said quietly, ‘Will you forgive me for a little time? I have something to attend to. I will be within call.’

Throughout that long, dreadful day, Gideon remained with Juliana in almost complete silence, interrupted only when Mrs Polehampton came in with tea or bouillon.

The little cabin was cut off, as if by some fathomless abyss, from the noise and bustle and brightness of the world outside. The sun was shining, and the temperature was like that of a fine summer day in England. A forest of masts lay in the river below the great pile of Fort William – lean, well-trimmed American vessels; Chinese ships, with an eye painted on either side of the bows, so that they could see their way; clumsy country boats laden with produce; the green, goose-shaped budgerows used for river travel; and thousands of small boats dashing in and out among them all, back and forth to a landing stage crowded with people of all shapes, sizes, colours, and occupations. The wind was blowing from the sea, so that not even the smell of the city’s open drains spoiled the attractions of the scene.

Inside the cabin, Juliana sat by the bed, her hand limp in Gideon’s and her face like a sleepwalker’s, watching the baby. He lay, perfectly quiet, in a kind of daze, his eyes opening occasionally and then falling closed again as if the effort were too great.

Once, Juliana said in a flat, expressionless voice, ‘I
cannot
spare him.’ And again, when Mrs Polehampton had been in, ‘If God is merciful, I don’t see how He
can
take him away when I have nothing else left.’ And, when the evening was falling, ‘It’s my fault. All my fault.’

Gideon turned her gently towards him. ‘No. Nothing of what has happened in this last terrible year has been your fault. You mustn’t think like that.’

But her eyes were empty. ‘It is my fault. When he was born, I knew his
ayah
would care for him, so I didn’t learn how to care for him myself. And then there was no
ayah,
and I had to. It is my own ignorance that has brought him to this.’

‘My dear, there are other far more experienced mothers whose experience hasn’t saved their children.’

But all she would do was shake her head stubbornly. ‘No. My fault, my fault.’

Night came, and he couldn’t leave her. Mrs Polehampton seemed to be forever in and out, and it was a while before Gideon realized that she thought she was protecting Juliana. ‘Propriety!’ he thought savagely. ‘At a time like this!’ But she was right, he knew. Although the baby was dying, the other passengers would remember all through the long voyage that lay ahead that young Mrs Curtis had been alone with a man, all night, in her cabin.

The crisis came, as crises so often did, in the bleakest watches of the night. The child, without warning, became restless, and Juliana picked him up and walked the cabin with him, murmuring to him, kissing him, rocking him, her face stark. This time, it was Gideon who went to see Mrs Polehampton. ‘There
must
be something we can do.’

She went back to the cabin with him, treading softly, to find the baby struggling weakly in his mother’s arms.

‘Sit down, my dear, and take him in your lap.’

Gideon stood, his back against the door, and watched.

After what seemed a very long time, Juliana turned her gaze away from the baby gasping helplessly in her lap, her eyes wide blue pools of agony in her blanched face. She said something then, but her voice was so choked that the sense didn’t reach Gideon at first.

‘I
cannot
see my child die.’

Mrs Polehampton murmured, soft but clear, ‘Look, my dear, how bright his eyes are growing. Too bright for ours to look on.’

But Juliana couldn’t turn her head. And still, she couldn’t turn it when the child’s limbs became suddenly, weakly, convulsed and then quite still. It was Mrs Polehampton who stretched out her hand and closed the staring eyes. ‘So He giveth His beloved sleep,’ she said quietly, and lifted the thin, inanimate little body and smoothed down the lacy white cotton robe, and laid him on the bed.

Juliana sat with Gideon’s arms around her for all that remained of the night, and only when dawn came did she turn her eyes towards the bed. With a gasp, she said. ‘So peaceful. Your papa will look after you now, my darling.’ She stopped, but after a moment went on, ‘I only had you for ten months. Only ten months.’

In the late afternoon, Dr Fayrer, who had been in Lucknow, too, came to fasten down the lid of the little coffin, and he and Gideon carried it, light as it was, to the grave in Park Street cemetery. Somehow, the news had reached almost all the Lucknow refugees, and it was that that almost broke Juliana. So many who had suffered what she had suffered, even if she had scarcely even seen them in all the long months; their presence was a mute recognition of what they had shared.

When Gideon took Juliana back to the ship an hour before it sailed, Mrs Polehampton had tidied away every reminder of the tragedy. Everything but a bright, woolly ball on a cotton cord, that lay almost hidden behind the clothes chest.

Gideon, for an hour or two, had been tempted to abandon all he should be doing in India to sail home with her. But the ship was full, and besides, it would be better for her to go alone, to come to terms with things in her own way. He didn’t want to over-protect her, to smother her. And he knew now that he loved her too much to do otherwise.

Some time, perhaps, things would come right for them. It didn’t matter – did it? – that he was twice her age.

But he knew that it did.

He said, ‘One of the family will meet you when you land, my dear. And during the time between, try to find strength.’ He kissed her then, fleetingly on the cheek, and turned away.

As he reached the door, she said her only goodbye.

‘Thank you Gideon. If it weren’t for you, I don’t think...’ And then, with seeming irrelevance, ‘I don’t want their sympathy, you know.’

He nodded and went, leaving her seated, a frail little figure, alone beside the bed.

Gideon was still in India, more than eight months later, when Theo’s letter arrived.

Gideon, dear boy, where the devil are you? I am addressing this care of Sir Hugh Rose’s headquarters, as my study of the newspapers suggests that the pair of you – with assistance, no doubt – are probably chasing Tantia Topi around Central India. What a pity the Rani of Jhansi came to such an untimely end; there is something so appealing about a pretty woman leading her troops into battle, don’t you think? Wouldn’t Vilia have revelled in it, given the chance!

Thank you for your letters about Juliana. What a difficult time the poor child has had. We all – Magnus excepted – took due note of your instructions and refrained from weeping all over her when she arrived, although I doubt whether she would have noticed if we had. I think she may have developed some kind of protective shell on the voyage home, for she is politely distant to us all; not melancholic, thank God, but bright and faintly brittle.

I met her myself when the ship docked, and not without inconvenience, I may tell you. Last year’s financial panic in the States, and here, was too closely tied to railway speculation not to cause us a good deal of trouble, and Drew, Jermyn and I have been engaged on an intensive salvage operation. Vilia has been very tiresome. If only she would say, ‘I told you so’ straight out, instead of holding her tongue so ostentatiously! However, we are now agreed that the time has come to bow gracefully out of railways and into armaments. Jermyn, clever boy, has designed a very interesting rifled field gun. It means we will have to go into steel, but I don’t object. Our main competition is going to come from Krupps, although I suspect Armstrong, who is irritatingly well in with the War Office, may also give us trouble. We might find ourselves competing with Randalls’, too; we had to cut our connection with them last year to save our own elegant hides, because every British company with American associations found itself not only suspect, but positively hunted! When I tell you that over £32 million in American debt was held by British investors, you will understand why. Did you know that Perry has retired now? His younger son, Benson, who is about eighteen and has the same inborn technical wizardry as Jermyn, is running things – under supervision, of course. Francis, whom we met in ’51, appears to have no ambitions in that direction,
his
only wish being to study human nature. So delightful for him to be the idle – and idolized – son of a rich father.