By Eastern windows (29 page)

‘Quite a few things, but I wish to get it all done quickly, before I return to active service.’

‘If time is short,’ John closed his book, ‘we can see to the documentation for the transfer tonight if you wish.’

‘And I will need quite a few bank drafts.’

‘Very well.’ John stood to turn indoors. ‘We shall work on them together. Have you drawn up a list?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then I shall draw up the bank drafts tonight and have them authorised tomorrow.’

*

The first gift of money was sent to Mammy Dinah in Antigua, together with the beautiful silk shawl Jane had chosen for her in Macao. In the same post he also sent a letter to Thomas Jarvis, requesting to buy Dinah's freedom, for which he was prepared to pay any price.

The second bank draft went to Jane’s impoverished sister in England, Rachel Woodward, together with a trust deed that would see Rachel generously provided for over a period of ten years.

Individual amounts of money were also sent to various cousins on the island of Mull, for the purpose of educating their daughters as well as their sons. An annual allowance was settled on his mother and brother Donald for life. The lease and rent of the farm at Oskamull would remain his responsibility. A one-off payment was sent to his Uncle Murdoch, but it was his mother and Donald that concerned Lachlan the most.

In the accompanying letter he urged Murdoch to command his mother to abstain from all laborious work and to attend more to her own ease and comfort. The money he had settled on her would relieve her of all financial worries, so she should now consider employing at least one servant to help her in the house, and at least one male servant to help Donald with any heavy work on the farm.

When the letter to Murdoch was finished, he sat for a long moment staring in front of him with a thoughtful frown. His concern about his own mother had caused him to remember something Jane had once said to him in a worried voice about Mammy Dinah. ‘
She’s becoming a little infirm now, her knees are very stiff, yet she has to work from morning till night.’

He abruptly lifted the pen and began writing another letter to Thomas Jarvis, reminding him of Dinah’s advancing age, and urging him, ‘
in all humanity and compassion,
’ to grant Dinah her freedom, ‘
to allow the poor woman to spend her final years in some degree of ease and retirement.’

*

To Lachlan’s surprise, and in a shorter time than he had expected, he received a reply from the lawyers of Thomas Jarvis in Antigua.

  
Dinah’s freedom, and that of the five other named slaves in Antigua, was formally and legally granted. Sums of money were then sent to the lawyers for all six, enough to allow them to buy their own homes and become financially independent, without the need to recourse to ‘unpaid slave labour’ with anyone on the island again.

Finally, Lachlan turned his attention to Jane's little Indian maid, Marianne. He was at a loss to know what to do with her. Marianne was now almost fifteen, an age when most Indian girls were married and preparing for motherhood.

Since returning to his duties at Headquarters he had leased a house on the Ramparts in Bombay, in which he now lived with Marianne, George Jarvis, Bappoo and a few other household servants. Only one person was missing from his usual happy household, and without her, Marianne had no role to play.

What was he to do with Marianne?

As Lachlan studied Marianne, he noticed for the first time that she was very pretty, with that small oval face so popular in India. Indeed, everything about her was small and delicate and dainty. He watched her move gracefully around the house and garden, dressed in her colourful saris with a billowing gauze veil hanging from her head. She was, he realised, the perfect picture of India's idea of beauty. And let loose in the world she would be swiftly snatched up by a Maharaja or European as a concubine.

What should he do with Marianne?
 
She had no family, having been abandoned long ago by her starving mother who had sold her for the price of a bowl of rice. But that was India, the darker side of India, where if the yearly crop failed and famine set in, the people were driven by starvation to seaports like Cochin or Bombay where a mother could sell her daughter into slavery for the price of a bowl of rice, and a father could sell his wife and all his children for fifty rupees.

 
Marianne had been sold at the age of four. Since then she had been sold numerous times as a servant to various families, the British residents of Bombay being liable to move on every few years.

Marianne's last household had been that of the Morleys, but Maria Morley had asked no price when she passed the girl on. She had simply given Marianne to Jane as a wedding gift.

He had two options, the first of which might appeal to Marianne herself. Firstly, he could try and arrange for her to be married to some respectable and personable Indian male, for which he would supply the bride dowry.

But then, he realised, no respectable Indian male would agree to marry a Hindu girl who lived out of her caste and had spent most of her life as an
Angrezi
slave. She would be considered unclean, unworthy, fit only for work as a servant or a concubine, but never a wife.

And somehow, as he thought about it even longer, he had an uneasy feeling that bestowing Marianne with a dowry in order to secure a speedy marriage to an Indian of the lower castes was not what Jane would have wanted.

A second option remained. He could arrange for Marianne to go into service with yet another British military household, or the household of a British nabob of the East India Company.

 
No – not with a nabob! So many of them had their own little
zenana
quarter of concubines hidden away somewhere at the back of the house, under the guise of `servants' quarters. And poor little Marianne – just the thought of some fat, over-curried nabob touching the child filled him with revulsion. And she
was
just a child. He knew he would never forgive himself if she were unwittingly placed into bad hands or with anyone that would use her ill.

Finally, he decided to discuss the situation with Marianne herself.

She came into the room in answer to his summons and greeted him with the familiar salaam of `
Namaste
,' palm joined to palm.

He bade her to sit down.

In one graceful movement she dropped into a lotus posture on the carpet. She wore a peacock-blue silk tunic over fitted pyjamas crinkled at the ankles. Her flimsy veil slipped from her head and slid down to settle around her shoulders, but she made no move to return it to its former position. Her dark eyes were riveted to his face.

He started by speaking to her casually, conversationally, but she was shy with him and smiled demurely without answering, her small rosebud mouth pursed coyly like two crimson petals.

He persisted speaking casually, because he knew her so well, knew all her little ways. He talked to her about Britain, knowing how much she loved hearing about
Belait
. He poured himself a glass of brandy and listened to her giggling as he told her about the Grand Gala Balls in London where men in white stockings and ladies in enormous gowns danced in couples all night long. She shook her head in laughter and refused to believe it.

Why dance themselves and not pay others to do it for them, she wanted to know. In Hind, no people of any worth or consequence danced themselves. If dancing was needed for entertainment, then dancing girls were hired to do it! She found it very amusing that the people of
Belait
had servants to do their cooking and cleaning and serving, but when it came to the evening entertainment, they had to do all the dancing themselves!

‘
Kyo?
’

He confessed he didn't know why.

She thought it hilariously funny, and presently she was laughing and chattering. He then brought the conversation back to India, and asked her what would
she
like to do now? There was no longer a mistress in his house for her to serve. Would she like to go to another English lady? Would she like to be married to a young Indian male? Whatever
she
wanted, he assured her, is what he would try to arrange for her.

Marianne said nothing. Lachlan watched her dark eyes widen until they looked huge in her small face.

‘Well?’ he asked.

She bowed her head and sat very still. The length of the silence became oppressive. He had to repeat the question. ‘What would you like to do?’

Slowly her head lifted and her dark satin eyes regarded him nervously. ‘I like to go to English school,' she whispered.

Astonished, he stared at her. ‘You want to go to England?’

 
‘No, no, stay in Hindustan, but go to English school.’

‘The English school in Bombay?’

 
‘She nodded tensely.

 
He sat looking at her.
 
My God – it was the best solution of all!

‘Yes,’ he said slowly.
 
‘Yes, I think Jane would like that.’

‘I think too,’ Marianne whispered.

The days that followed found him arranging for Marianne to be boarded at the English school in Bombay and educated and cared for at his expense.

Two weeks later Marianne was all packed and ready to leave. She could not, of course, be housed in that part of the school reserved for the daughters of Europeans, but in a wing that housed the half-caste daughters of soldiers and officials who had married Indian women, and were termed under the category of
 
‘mixed blood.’

Now the time for departure had come, Marianne looked nervous and apprehensive. Lachlan assured her that he would keep in constant touch with her. She must write to him often, in Hindi at first, but then, hopefully, in perfect English. He had also arranged with her schoolmistress that he be sent correspondence every week to inform him of her progress and welfare.

Then, finally, he handed her an important-looking legal document that was sealed with red wax. In his other hand he held an identical document.

‘This one I will give to your schoolmistress, Marianne, but the other you must keep safely yourself. Both are documents which confirm that you are perfectly free, and nobody's servant or slave.’

Her lips quivered, she attempted to control them, bowing her head and keeping it bowed.

‘But as a free person,’ he said, ‘you are required by law to have more than one name. So I have given you the name of Marianne Jarvis. Is that acceptable to you?’

‘Yes, my father,’ Marianne whispered. Her head stayed bowed as she knelt down and went to the trouble of unstrapping her box and unpacking all the clothes she had so carefully packed, removing each item one by one until she could hide the document at the very bottom, as if it was some valuable treasure.

George Jarvis, who stood watching her return the clothes to the box, fully understood why Marianne had handled the document as if it was priceless. It was, after all, a certificate from her employer and guardian – the Major-Sahib Macquarie of the British Army and British Raj – and who in all Hind would
dare
to harm her on seeing that!

But George himself was feeling very frightened, his eyes over-bright and nervous. He realised that Marianne was speaking shyly to him, saying she was sorry they all must part now, so sorry.

‘I too,’ George whispered.
 
‘I sorry we all part, too.’

 
Under normal circumstances, a Hindu girl would never mix freely with a Muslim boy, but Marianne had never lived the life of a true Hindu. From too early an age she had grown up with the
Angrezi
. Nearly all her life had been spent with the Mems in their houses, and George now spent all his time with the Sahibs of the Army. Neither truly fitted into any race anymore. Both had been sold as slaves, and both would still be slaves, if it were not for the kindness of Lachlan-Sahib whom they both loved and whom they referred to as ‘Father’ in the respectful tradition of reverence as used in the East, and not the paternal tradition of the West.

‘Shall we go? Don't forget to say goodbye to Bappoo.’ Lachlan walked over to the waiting Tonga while Marianne moved to stand before Bappoo with hands joined in a salaam and whispering a shaky farewell.

Bappoo sighed, smiled, sighed again, and wiped a big hand over his face as if he too felt sad at saying farewell to the little Hindu girl. Then, with a sudden smile he broke all traditions and patted Marianne affectionately on the cheek.

 
‘
Khudaa haafiz,
’ he said tenderly. God protect you.

Lachlan sat beside Marianne in the Tonga. As it drove away her eyes filled with tears and she turned back, waving tearfully to George and Bappoo.

George Jarvis stood with hand raised, feeling sick with terror. He knew it was his turn next to be either sold off, or sent away.

But George's turn never came. As the days passed into weeks and then months his constant presence at the side of Major Macquarie seemed to be taken for granted.