Zemindar (103 page)

‘Perhaps you’re right. We’ll see. Meanwhile, let’s not talk of mines and martial matters. We’ve such a lot of things to talk about. All these months past I have been holding long, long conversations with you. Did you guess? In the strangest places and at the oddest times. They were the best I could do, but not very satisfactory. I suspect I too often gave you my opinions simply because I did not know yours, and we’ve had enough disagreements in the past for me to know there will be more to come.’

‘Indeed there will. We shall have a most contentious life, I fancy. I am very used to forming my own mind. I believe you may find it displeasing.’

‘Why should I?’

‘Well, perhaps you have lived alone too long to learn how to deal with your own will thwarted. As it will be sometimes, naturally. And that will certainly displease you.’

‘Never—so long as you do the thwarting. Your slightest wish will ever be my command. You know that.’

‘Then don’t go down the mines!’

‘Ah! Conscience must take precedence even over your wishes. I’m afraid …’

‘There you are, you see …’

‘And surely you would not have me do less than Toddy-Bob or Charles or all the others to secure your safety?’

I enjoyed the bantering tone of his voice, belied by the tender expression in his eyes, but knew I must be careful not to allow the conversation to edge into the dangerous territory of where these idyllic disputes would take place. To reassure myself, I twined my fingers in the fingers of his left hand safely hidden under the crimson quilt he was wearing. It was difficult not to enlarge upon my dream plans for our life together; but, nervous of what his intentions might be, I preferred not to rock the barque of my frail happiness.

On the verandah of the Fayrers’ house the ladies were singing hymns with a group of off-duty gentlemen from their battery. I caught a glimpse of Charles’s fair head and waved but he did not see me, so earnestly was he carolling with a hymn book held before his face.

We walked down the slope to the Baillie Guard and across the open space beyond it.

‘The final touch!’ Oliver chuckled as we went. ‘A pandy band playing “The Queen”, guns firing, and ladies singing hymns amid it all!’ And suddenly I was laughing too.

Each time I viewed our meagre fortifications from outside as the pandies must have seen them, my astonishment at my own safety grew more pronounced. Tumbled, frail, battered before completed, the wall of brickwork, mud, firewood, bamboo and sacking stretched in an often interrupted arc surrounding, but hardly protecting, the ruined buildings I now knew so well.

‘Crazy!’ Oliver said, as together we paused. ‘Crazy. I always said the place could not be defended.’

‘But it
was
defended. It is being defended. Oliver, how can you! We are entering the fifth month of the defence and you still say it cannot be done.’

‘Why the devil didn’t they get on with it?’ he demanded of the evening air as we turned back towards the old gate. ‘There was nothing to stop them. Nothing.’

‘You sound regretful that they never had the fortitude to make the final push that would have meant our end. I believe your loyalties really are as ambivalent as rumour has it!’

‘Hmph! Perhaps. Though I incline more to the belief that I am as Ungud is, as Ishmial is, as the pandies should be. I am loyal to my
nimcha
, my “salt”. In other words, to the hand that feeds me, though in my case it would be more correct to say to the land that feeds me. Hassanganj.’

A sharp chill made itself felt around my heart, so I began talking nonsense.

‘Would you be pleased if the pandies win? I mean over all?’

‘Don’t be foolish, you know quite well they can’t win—over all or any other way. And no, I would not want them to if they could. They would not have the capacity, at this time, to manage their own affairs, their own country, or what we have made of their country over the last hundred years. But I see an old order dying. High time it went too, in some ways. But much that was good, estimable, and to be emulated as I think, will also die. That I must necessarily regret.’

‘Oliver, don’t you hate them? At all? For what they have done to you, to Hassanganj? To all of us here—and in Cawnpore?’

‘No.’

‘You surely cannot still find any justification for their behaviour? It has been appalling.’

‘I can understand it. In some respects I even sympathize with it. War is appalling, Laura. On both sides. Always. Our own record is not blameless, remember, and in any event hatred destroys the hater more efficiently than the hated. Your friend Marcus Aurelius has something to say on that point—and by the way, I did not know you were an admirer of his; you see how little I know of you?’

‘Oh, yes. He’s been my greatest comfort for years, but I left my old copy in Wajid Khan’s house, which is why Mr Roberts gave me his. But I cannot recall anything about hatred explicitly.’

‘No, not explicitly. But he says, somewhere, “The best way of avenging thyself is not to become like the wrongdoer,” Do you hate the pandies, Laura?’

‘No, I don’t think so. But I … I am repelled by what they have done, and frightened of it. You will say because I do not understand, and perhaps you are right. But they are human, after all, and surely one should expect some sort of human behaviour … standards … even though they are not of our race.’

He was silent and I continued, ‘I think it is terrible to be confronted with such … such loathing, such vicious hatred. To have to live among people capable of it …’ Again on dangerous ground, I fell silent.

Oliver sighed and said seriously, ‘You are right. The bitterness of this is going to last a long time. A very long time. Yet we have earned it too. We must not forget that, nor allow it to be said of us again.’

The chill around my heart increased, and I turned to him, took his hand and said, ‘I love you so much. So much!’

As we approached the Gaol, we saw several people crowding around our door looking into the kitchen: Mrs Bonner and her stout husband and young Minerva, two or three other neighbours, a couple of officers. Immediately anxious, I hurried up the steps. They made way for us without speaking.

‘What’s happened?’ I demanded urgently. ‘Is something wrong with Pearl?’ But I was at once reassured as Jessie stood with Pearl in her arms, the baby pulling at Jessie’s deep red hair with every appearance of good health and spirits.

‘Oh, Laura, thank God! Charles has gone out to look for you. We didn’t want you to hear from strangers …’

‘What is it, Kate?’ said Oliver, as I stood in silence wondering what could be wrong in my world since all the people I loved were present and well.

Intent upon the baby, I only then saw Wallace Avery sitting on one of the cane stools at the back of the room, his head in his hands.

‘It’s … oh, Laura dear, it’s poor Mr Roberts!’ said Kate.

‘Killed?’ asked Oliver as I waited.

Kate shook her head.

‘Hurt then?’

‘He has shot himself. He is dead.’

‘No! Oh no, Kate! He was here …’

‘I … I found him.’ Wallace looked up. His face was white, his eyes blotched and red with drink and tears. ‘My God! Why the hell did
I
have to find him? It was frightful … frightful.’ And he began to sniff and blubber like a frightened child.

Oliver took three strides across the room to where the bottle of brandy that Wallace himself had given us stood on a shelf. He reached for a cup and poured out a tot. ‘Here, man, drink this,’ he ordered with a touch of the old impatience. Wallace complied noisily, then put the cup down and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘And, my God, when I remember that I had gone to him to ask for a drink … and he was there … finished, all the time I was searching around his bedroom!’

‘Wallace, when did it happen?’ I whispered.

‘I don’t know. But not long ago. Couldn’t have been.’

‘No. He was here only a couple of hours since.’

‘Was he? Well, there you are, you see. I … I had got in from a spell on the guns at the South Face. Not much doing actually, but tedious, d’you know, and I’d been there since midday. Needed a drink to … to help me ease up, and I found my bottle was empty. Knew old Roberts had a couple of bottles under his bed. Usen’t to drink much, not generally, but just lately he had been findin’ it more of a comfort like the rest of us. So—well, I trotted down the verandah to his room but he wasn’t there. Door was open, of course, so I thought, knowing him, well, he wouldn’t mind if I took just a tot or two before asking him. I found a cup, but not the bottles. No furniture, y’know; just a trunk and a string bed left in the place. I felt under the pillows and looked underneath the bed, but there was nothing. Then I remembered. ‘He’s—he was—a neat sort of chap, very tidy, and he kept a lot of things on the shelves in the bathroom, since there was no table or anything in the bedroom. So … so I went in and found him. God! Poor old Roberts!’

Tears sprang to his protruberant eyes again and he passed a podgy hand over his face to control himself.

‘He … he … It must have been hell, trying to screw himself up to the pitch, d’you know. There was a glass, still with a little brandy in it, on the floor beside the bottle. He was very particular, you know, Laura? Very tidy … and liked everything in its place about him. He must have … I suppose he hadn’t wanted to make a … a mess everywhere. He’d got into the tin tub and … and sat down in it—it was empty, of course—in all his clothes and with his boots on. And then … and then he’d put a pistol in his mouth. There were … there were brains and bone and hair all over the wall … and, oh God! Sickening, it was sickening to see poor old Roberts like that. He did … no one … any harm.’

I had not wept when Emily had died. The last time I could remember giving way to tears on another’s behalf was the night in the peepul grove. Since then, but for my weeping when Oliver had left us to ride back to Hassanganj for Yasmina, tears had proved inadequate to ease my heart. Now, however, I remembered the words Mr Roberts had spoken, half to himself, on the courtyard steps so short a time before. ‘The last strand has given,’ he had murmured. I had not known what he meant.

Now his meaning had been made clear. Had I not confessed to my feeling for Oliver and his for me, perhaps my poor friend might have been able to continue his lonely struggle until the relief. Bereft of all he had clung to, from his love of scholarship to his opium, at the last he had realized that his affection for me too was a lost cause and had determined quietly to put an end to his misery.

I could have helped him. I knew I could have helped him. I had not really tried to enter his mind—his heart—even when he had been speaking of his troubles, and of his inability to find comfort where once he had found it. I had allowed my thoughts to wander from what he was trying to communicate to me, busying my mind with the anticipated delight of Oliver’s coming. Overwhelmed with a regret very close to guilt, and with great grief for the awful isolation in which my disclosure of love had left my friend, I turned and, unmindful of the curious faces of our neighbours at the door, buried my face against Oliver’s rough corduroy and wept as though my heart would break.

They buried Mr Roberts the following night, in that same unquiet field where lay Sir Henry Lawrence, Major Banks, Mr Ommaney, Mr Polehampton, Colonel Anderson, Captain Fulton, and all the other men, great or obscure, heroes or frightened fools, who had succumbed to the enemy. Where, too, lay Emily and Jessie’s little Jamie.

‘They might make difficulties about a burial in consecrated ground,’ Charles had hazarded the night before. ‘A suicide! … After all …’

Kate and I had looked at each other in disbelief, and Oliver, angry as I had ever seen him said, ‘By God, if they do, I’ll bury him with my own hands—and in consecrated ground. He was a victim of this siege as surely as any man who caught a pandy bullet or was blown to pieces by a pandy shell. He’ll be buried in consecrated ground, I can promise you—if that is what Laura thinks he would have wanted?’

I had nodded. Mr Roberts’s Christian faith was pleasantly tempered with irony, but he was a man who valued the proprieties. No doubt the authorities reached the same conclusion as Oliver; no difficulties were made by them as to my friend’s final resting place, and I felt uncomfortably sure that only Charles had even considered them.

Oliver, Charles, Wallace and some other friends of Mr Roberts’s followed the
doolies
carrying the day’s dead down to the churchyard, which was still considered too exposed to fire to allow the presence of women. From the Gaol verandah, I watched the
cortège
pass quickly through the dusk, and repeated to myself as a sort of prayer of leavetaking the quotation Mr Roberts had used to inscribe his copy of Marcus Aurelius for my use. ‘The perfection of moral character consists in this: in passing every day as the last.’ Had he been weaker than I guessed, I wondered? Or in a sense stronger? I would never know now, but I could hope that the stern, uncompromising injunction of Marcus Aurelius had given him some comfort; that, finding he had reached his last day unawares, Mr Roberts had decided to end it in the full if mistaken consciousness of the dignity of what he did. I could allow myself to think of him as fearful of his own future; not unmanned by his own fear.

After the funeral service, our men had returned to the Gaol. Oliver, forgetting or not caring for Charles’s presence, had held me and kissed my swollen eyelids and tried to comfort me, and I had gone to him with eager gratitude. We had long since stopped pretending only friendship before Kate and Jess, and I had forgotten that Charles, so little present in the Gaol, might still be ignorant of how matters lay between his brother and myself.

When I pulled away from Oliver, laughing tremulously and trying to pat my hair in place, I looked up and caught sight of Charles in the doorway frowning at us both with an expression close to outrage. As he caught my eye, he turned on his heel and strode away without a word, and had our rickety-hinged door been capable of slamming, he would certainly have slammed it.