Flood of Fire (30 page)

Since then a lingering bitterness had slowly crept into Captain Mee's life. The light-hearted exuberance of his youth had been replaced by resignation and resentment. The one thing that seemed to sustain him now was his bond with the sepoys.

It saddened Kesri to think how different his butcha's life and career might have been if not for that unfortunate entanglement with the missy-mem. But none of this was ever spoken of between them, not even during the long journey from Rangpur to Calcutta when they talked more as friends than as officer and sepoy. Of course Captain Mee did not neglect to ask after Kesri's wife and children – and had the captain been married Kesri would have done the same. But that was different: the family of a married man was safe ground – this other thing was not.

On the last day of the journey, Captain Mee said: ‘So, havildar, what will you do when we return from this expedition? Do you think you'll put in for your pension and go back to your family?'

‘Yes, sir.'

Then Captain Mee made a disclosure that was not entirely unexpected. ‘Well, havildar, I wouldn't be surprised if I put my papers in myself,' he said. ‘I don't know that the Pacheesi has been any better for me than it's been for you.'

*

After his second tryst with Mrs Burnham, Zachary's burden of contrition became far less oppressive: it wasn't that guilt ceased to weigh on him – it was just that his eagerness to return to the boudoir made him less mindful of it.

But the next visit did not come about as soon as he would have liked: there was a long, almost unendurable, wait before he heard from Mrs Burnham again. A full fortnight passed before the next message arrived, hidden inside a weighty tome of sermons: it consisted of a single cryptic marking, on a scrap of paper –
12th
. The reference was clearly to a date, one that happened to be two days away.

In preparation for the assignation, Zachary made a careful study of the routines of the chowkidars and durwans who guarded the compound; he learnt to listen for their footsteps and tracked the glow of their lanterns. When the night of the 12th came he evaded the gatekeepers with ease: this part wasn't difficult, he told Mrs
Burnham; he had figured out how to navigate the grounds without the watchmen being any the wiser.

His certainty on this score buttressed Mrs Burnham's confidence and they began to meet more often. Instead of exchanging messages, they would settle on a date at the time of parting. No longer did they care whether the servants were away or not; it was always in the small hours of the night that Zachary stole over to the mansion anyway, and at that time the grounds were usually deserted. As his familiarity with the grounds increased, he learnt to make good use of every scrap of cover, including the wintry mists that often rolled in from the river, at night.

In no way did the increased frequency of their meetings diminish Zachary's appetite for them: each assignation was a fresh adventure; every visit seemed to conjure up a new woman – one who was so unlike the Mrs Burnham of the past that he would not have imagined that she existed if their connection had not taken this unforeseen turn. Yet he knew also that there was nothing accidental about what had happened between them: it had come about because his body had sensed something that was beyond the grasp of his conscious mind – that hidden within the Beebee of Bethel's steely shell there existed another, quite fantastical and capricious creature; a woman who was endlessly inventive, not just with her body but also with her words.

One night he got caught in a shower of rain and arrived at the top of the staircase completely drenched. Mrs Burnham was waiting for him in the goozle-connuh. ‘Oh look at you, my dear, dripping pawnee everywhere. Stand still while I take off your jammas and jungiah.'

After stripping him of his clothing, she made him sit on the rim of the bathtub and knelt between his parted thighs. Pulling up her chemise, she draped the hem over his legs and pressed herself against his belly. Murmuring gently, she began to dry his head and shoulders with a towel, clasping him ever closer as she reached around to rub his back. Suddenly she looked down at the unlaced throat of her chemise and gave a little cry: ‘Oh look! I see a helmet! A brave little havildar has climbed up my chest and is raising his head above the nullah, to take a dekko! Oh, but look! He is drenched, even under his topee!'

She delighted in tantalizing him with unfamiliar words and puzzling expressions yet, no matter how intimate their bodily explorations, no matter how much they indulged their appetite for each other, there remained certain matters of decorum on which she would not yield: even when the organ that she had nicknamed the ‘bawhawder sepoy' was entrenched within her, its master and commander remained Mr Reid, the mystery, and she was never anything but Mrs Burnham, the Beebee of Bethel.

Once, when ‘her shoke was coming on' as she liked to say, he felt the onset of her tremors and cried out, to urge her on: ‘Oh spend, Cathy, spend! Don't stint yourself!'

No sooner had the syllables left his mouth than she froze, her shoke forgotten.

‘What? What was that you called me?'

‘Cathy.'

‘No, my dear, no!' she cried, twitching her hips in such a way as to abruptly unbivouack the sepoy.

‘I am, and I must remain, Mrs Burnham to you – and you must ever remain Mr Reid to me. If we permit ourselves to lapse into “Zachs” and “Cathies” in private then you may be sure that our tongues will ambush us one day when we are in company. In just such a way was poor Julia Fairlie found to be loochering with her groom – for who has ever known a syce to call his memsahib “Julie” as the wretched ooloo was heard to do one day as he was helping her into the saddle? And so was it revealed that much of their riding and saddling was done without horses and in no time at all poor Julia was packed off to Doolally – and all because she'd allowed that halalcore of a syce to be too free with two syllables. No, dear, no, it just will not hoga. “Mrs Burnham” and “Mr Reid” we are, and so we must remain.'

If Zachary bowed to her in this matter it wasn't only because he accepted her reasoning: it was also because there was something startlingly sensuous about hearing her moan after the passing of a shoke: ‘Oh Mr Reid, Mr Reid! You have made a jellybee of your poor Mrs Burnham!'

The invocation of her married name was a reminder that theirs were stolen, adulterous pleasures, which meant that inhibition was meaningless and restraint absurd: so deadly was the seriousness of
their crime that it could only be effaced by frivolity – as when she would cry, with a playful tug: ‘It's my turn now, to bajow your ganta.'

She deployed these strings of words with the skill of an expert angler, teasing, mocking and egging him on to further advances in the art of the puckrow.

‘Oh Mr Reid, I do not doubt that it is a joy to be a launder of your age, with a lathee always ready to be lagowed – and a dumb-poke is certainly a fine thing, not to be scorned. But you know, my dear mystery, a plain old-fashioned stew can always be improved by an occasional chutney.'

‘You've lost me, Mrs Burnham,' he mumbled.

‘Oh? Have you never heard of chartering then?'

‘You mean like chartering a boat?'

‘No, you silly green griffin!' She laughed. ‘In India, chartering is what you do with this' – here she reached between his lips and pinched the tip of his tongue – ‘your jib.'

Thus began a new set of explorations, in which he was soon revealed to be a complete novice, blundering about with all the aptitude of a luckerbaug. ‘Oh no, my dear, no! You are not chewing on a chichky, and nor are you angling for a cockup! Making a chutney dear, is not a blood-sport.'

Her caprices made him long to please her and the mixture of severity and tenderness with which she treated him was far more arousing to him than words of love would have been. On the night when his experiments in chartering finally succeeded in bringing on her shoke, his heart swelled with pride to hear her say: ‘It is a wonder to me, my dear mystery, how quickly you have mastered the gamahuche!'

Her teasing enchanted him, and if he was bewildered by her refusal to take him seriously, he was also captivated by it. He took it for granted that she possessed boundless experience in the amorous arts, and considered it fitting that he should be treated as a neophyte. Yet there was a certain innocence about her too, and sometimes, when she was exploring his body, she would betray an ingenuousness that startled him.

One night when she was toying with the ‘sleeping bawhawder' and exclaiming over its docile charms, he grew impatient: ‘Oh
come now, Mrs Burnham! You are a married woman and have given birth to a child. Surely this is not the first time you've handled a co—'

Her hand was on his mouth before he could say the word.

‘No dear, no,' she said, ‘we will have none of those vulgarisms here. A woman may be bawdy with a woman, and a man with men, but never the one with the other.'

‘But why not?' he demanded. ‘Why should we not use the words that others use? Why shouldn't we speak of things by their accustomed names, as all people do?'

Her riposte was swift and unerring: ‘That is exactly why, my dear Mr Reid. Because all people do it, and we are not “all people”. We are you and I; no one is like us, and nor are we like them. Why should we borrow words from others when we can use our own?'

‘But that is unfair, Mrs Burnham,' he protested. ‘I never was no word-pecker – How'm I to keep pace with you?'

‘Oh fiddlesticks!' she said, illustrating the exclamation with her fingers. ‘And you a sailor! You should be ashamed to admit to a lack of words!'

‘Very well then, Mrs Burnham,' he said, ‘I will put my question in ship-language. You are a married woman and have had your mate's licence for many years. Surely you are not ignorant of the lay of a man's mast and hatches?'

‘Oh please, Mr Reid!' she cried with a laugh. ‘Do you imagine that respectable married people would be so wanton as to remove all their clothes and let their hands roam as do you and I? If so, you are much mistaken. I can assure you that for most wives and husbands, coupling is merely a matter of dropping the chitty in the dawk: it is done with a quick hoisting of nightgowns, and that too only when all the batties have been extinguished.'

‘But surely when you were first married …?'

‘No, Mr Reid, you are mistaken again,' she said with a sigh. ‘Mine was not that kind of marriage: my union with Mr Burnham came about for many purposes, but pleasure was not among them. I was but eighteen and he was twenty years my senior: he wanted respectability and an entrée into circles that had been closed to him. My father was a brigadier-general in the Bengal Native
Infantry, as I've told you, and it was in his power to open many doors. My dear papa, like many soldiers, was not provident in his ways and was always in debt. He and Mama had pinned their hopes on a brilliant marriage for me – and although a match with Mr Burnham was not quite that, he was a coming man, as they say, and already a Nabob. He offered my parents a very generous settlement.'

There was a confiding note in her voice that Zachary had not heard before; it was as if he were at last being admitted into a recess that was still deeper and more intimate than those he had already explored. Eager for more, he said: ‘Was there no feeling between you and Mr Burnham then? No attachment at all?'

She gave him one of her teasing smiles and tickled him under the chin, as though he were a child. ‘Really, Mr Reid, what
are
we to do with you?' she said. ‘Don't you know that a memsahib cannot allow mere feelings to get in the way of her career? Love is for harry-maids and dhobbins, not for women like us: that is what my mother taught me and it is what I shall teach my daughter. And it is not untrue, you know. One cannot live on love after all, and nor is mine an unhappy existence. Mr Burnham asks nothing of me except that I move in the right circles and run his house as a pucka Beebee should. Beyond that he leaves me to my own devices – so why should I do any less for him?'

‘So did you know all along then,' Zachary persisted, ‘about what he was getting up to, with girls like Paulette?'

‘No!' she said sharply. ‘I had my suspicions, but I did not inquire too closely, and if you want to know why I will tell you.'

‘Why?'

‘Because I too have not been the best of wives to him.'

He turned on his side and looked into her face with puzzled, questioning eyes: ‘What do you mean?'

‘Well, I'll tell you if you must know,' she said. ‘It goes back to the night of our wedding. When Mr Burnham came to my bed, I was seized by such dread that I fell into a dead faint. Nor was that the only time: I would fall into a swoon whenever he tried to embrace me. It happened so often that it was decided that I needed medical attention. I was taken to see the best English doctor in the city and he told me that I was suffering from a
condition of frigidity brought on by hysteria and other nervous disorders. It took years of treatment before I was able to conceive – and suffice it to say that since that time Mr Burnham has come to accept that I am in some respects an invalid, and he has been, in his own way, kind about it. And I, for my part, have long assumed that he had his outlets, as men do – but I had never imagined that it was of the kind that Paulette described to you.'

‘So what did you think …?'

But her mood had already changed, and she cut him short, with a playful tightening of her fist. ‘You are an inquisitive little mystery today, aren't you, Mr Reid? I confess I would rather answer to your sepoy than to you.'

The rebuff stung him: it was as if she had slammed a door on his face. He pulled himself abruptly free of her hands and reached for his breeches: ‘Well, you need answer to neither of us, Mrs Burnham – it is time for us to go, so we will bid you good night.'