Zemindar (110 page)

‘Your name will not be mentioned, Laura, I promise you, And the brute will get some, at least, of his just deserts. That too I can promise you.’

As it happened, I never did hear more of the matter and forbore from questioning Charles regarding it. No doubt, as happened at that time, condign punishment was meted out without formality or delay, and perhaps the threat of court martial or even the loss of his single stripe, was sufficient to ensure Tuppit’s silence.

We had reached the Gaol, but I was reluctant to go inside and face Kate and Jessie with my tear-smudged face and telltale clothing. We sat down on the lowest step of the flight leading up to the verandah, and I tried to tidy myself. Charles’s arm was still about my shoulders and I was glad of it. I leaned against him gratefully and for a moment put my aching head on his shoulder.

‘Oh, Charles, I’m so tired of it all!’ I whispered. ‘I’m sick and tired of the unending ugliness of everything. I’m tired of all the senseless dying and the dreadful wounds I see in the hospital, and of the smells and the noises. I’m tired of being always hungry and always dirty, and I’m so tired even of being tired. I’m tired of all my wretched memories and the dreams I have at night. I’m tired, tired.’

I began to cry again, but gently, and Charles produced a rag smelling of gun oil for me to blow my nose in.

All through the siege I had fought self-pity, knowing it consumed an energy that could be better employed elsewhere. I think I had been moderately successful in my attempts not to believe that my sufferings were, because they were mine, of a more refined or poignant nature than the sufferings of others. Now, the indignity to which I had been subjected undid a floodgate of regret, remorse and resentment at the whole tenor of my life over the past months. Suddenly everything to which I had been exposed appeared to me not only intolerable but intolerably painful, and for the first time the question, ‘Why did it happen to me?’ could not be denied. In a flash, all the shocks, ills and sorrows I had been required to meet and contend with swept over me in a mood of overwhelming despair.

‘My poor girl,’ Charles soothed, stroking my cropped head as I cried. ‘My poor brave girl. Don’t give way now, it’s nearly over. We’ll soon be away from here and, once at home, you’ll learn to forget it all, to see it in another light.’

‘Never,’ I sniffed vehemently. ‘I’ll never put on a nightdress and get between clean sheets, never eat a meal off china plates, never take a hot bath in a comfortable firelit bedroom without remembering what it is like to be without them. The memories of this will have eaten into my bones.’

Charles sighed and I knew he was thinking of Emily and her death. ‘In time, other things, other memories, will come to have more importance. You’ll marry and have a home and children, do all the pleasant normal things of life.’

‘Never!’

‘But you will. You’re young and life goes on, whatever happens. You are just depressed and shocked by what has happened tonight.’

It was simpler to allow him to hold his own opinion, and for a short time we sat in silence.

‘This may be the last chance we have of being alone for a long time, Laura,’ he said at length. ‘I know, or rather I suppose, that this is not the time to mention such matters, and I do not even know if I have any chance with you now. Am I right in thinking that you and Oliver have … have reached some sort of agreement? I don’t wish to pry. It’s none of my business, I know. But, well, he does seem deuced taken up with you these days, and you spend a great deal of time together, it appears. Have you an understanding?’

‘No!’ I answered bitterly. ‘No, Charles, that is the one thing we do not have.’

‘But you love him?’

I nodded my head beneath his hand.

He sighed deeply and removed his hand from my head and his arm from about my shoulders; I felt an unreasonable chill of desolation as he did so. There had been a delicious luxury in being supported, even if only physically.

‘You know how I feel about you, how I have felt for a long time past. I told you once—at a time when I shouldn’t have, I know—and my feelings have not altered. Recently I had begun to form some crazy notion that, if I remained out here until the country was again under control, I’d have done what I could to … to, well, soothe my own conscience in regard to Emily. Not very sensible, I suppose, but I hoped my feeling of guilt would have abated and that when it was all finished I could go home and, with a clear mind, ask you to have me.’

‘Charles, I am sorry.’

‘I’m too late, hm? Odd! How was it I never considered Oliver a likely rival or supplanter—for I know you did once care for me? Yet it was so obvious.’

‘It was not obvious even to me until quite recently.’

He thought in silence for a while.

‘But it should have been obvious to me. It would have been, had I been thinking of anything but my own unhappy affairs. After all, he is everything that most women would want. Everything that Emily wanted, in any event. You share many of his characteristics, I believe, and many of his interests too. And I suppose it is not to the man’s detriment, even to you, that he is rich, of some importance and the “
Sirkar
of Hassanganj”!’ There was an ironical note in his voice.

‘On the contrary,’ I sighed, ‘I wish he were not rich or important and, most of all, I wish he were not the “
Sirkar
of Hassanganj”. I cannot live there, and he can live nowhere else. Which is why we have no “understanding”.’

‘Yet you seemed to enjoy our time there?, You were well suited to the life.’

‘But Charles, after … this?’

‘I see. I suppose it is different for a woman.’

Again there was silence. What Charles was thinking I can only guess, but at the mention of Oliver my mind had once more reverted to my problem, my choice. I wondered whether he had called in to the Gaol while I was absent and what he would say—or more probably do—when he heard of my encounter with Tuppit. At once I decided he must never know.

‘How do I look now, Charles?’ I asked anxiously, fingering the collar of my gown and trying to make my ugly hair as neat as possible.

‘Not too bad. A bit puffy around the eyes. That’s all.’

‘Perhaps they’ll think it’s relief because of the beacon and everything,’ I hoped dubiously. ‘You must not mention what has happened tonight. I could not bear anyone to know—not even Kate or Oliver. Least of all Oliver.’

‘As you wish.’

I smoothed my skirts, got up and walked to the top of the steps.

‘Laura!’ Charles laid a detaining hand on my arm. ‘One moment before we go in.’

I waited. Along the verandah Mrs Bonner came to her window and banged it shut. Our door, too, was closed against the cold; a sliver of light beneath it and a soft murmur of voices told me Kate and Jessie were still up.

‘In view of what you have just said, of Oliver and your not being willing to live in Hassanganj, I must say that … that my hopes have risen a little again. Perhaps there is still reason for me to hope, and I want you to know that if, when I get home, and you are still free, I intend to …’

I put my fingers against his lips.

‘No, Charles, don’t say it. I know what you mean to say, but I cannot allow you to live, however remotely, in false hope. I am too fond of you, Charles. Don’t you see, I could not allow you to make a second unhappy marriage? Wasn’t one mistake enough?’

‘You would be no mistake. You cannot seriously expect me to think that?’

‘Loving a woman who cannot return your love would be nothing else. I can never love you—now. Dear Charles, please believe me. I can never love you other than as I do at this moment.’

‘I will not believe that,’ he said stubbornly. ‘I will not believe that. In time …’

‘Never, Charles. Never!’

We faced each other in the darkness of the verandah, straining to look into each other’s faces. I saw him almost as if for the first time, as in a sense it was. There was nothing left now, I realized sadly, of the confident, happy young man who had left England with his bride eighteen months before. I remembered the fresh-complexioned face with its frank blue eyes and the charming ready smile. A boy’s face, cheerful, insouciant.

A man’s face gazed back at me now, haggard and thin and not too clean, with unkempt whiskers, and shadows of fatigue and strain under the sunken eyes. A man’s face, too, in the quiet determination it expressed.

‘Laura,’ he said, taking my hand, ‘however little you may like it, I will continue to hope. I do not ask for encouragement. I realize that, for the moment, your thoughts and affections are not with me. But you cannot keep me from hoping. You cannot forbid it.’

Perhaps it was the new manliness in his face and manner that touched me; it could have been my memories of him as he had been. More likely it was the fact that I was grateful, not only because he had rescued me from Tuppit, but because his faltering declaration had somehow restored me in my own eyes. I was filled with a gentle, understanding affection for him.

On an impulse I reached up and kissed him quietly on his cheek. He put his arms around me, but not roughly or possessively, and for a moment we stood together in what might have appeared a loving embrace.

In that instant the door of our kitchen opened and even the dim light of the lantern must have sufficed to illumine our two forms entwined so closely together. I swung round, still smiling, expecting to see Kate, and instead found myself confronting Oliver Erskine. He stood stock-still in the yellow light for a moment and I flinched before the mingled pain and anger in his face. Then he smiled, but not pleasantly.

‘Good evening—and goodnight!’ he said to us both with mock cordiality. ‘And good luck!’ Without another glance, he walked swiftly up the verandah and away from us.

At once I realized the conclusion he had come to.

‘No, Oliver, wait!’ I cried after his retreating form, all self-respect forgotten. But he did not turn and my knees shook so that I could not run after him.

‘Oh, Laura, I’m sorry—he thinks that … Look, I’ll run and fetch him back. You can explain.’

‘No!’ I leaned against the post of the verandah and hid my eyes behind my hand. ‘No, Charles. It’s no good … there’s too much to explain now, and I … I still don’t know the answers.’

‘Answers?’

‘I can’t explain,’ I said wearily. ‘I can’t explain.’

Thereafter Oliver Erskine disappeared from my life as effectively as if he had abandoned the Kingdom of Oudh.

I could not sleep that night remembering the expression in his eyes. Stolidly I worked through the following day and hurried home, hoping against hope that I would find him as I often did, sitting on a stool in the kitchen with Pearl in his arms, making Jessie laugh. He did not come, however, not that night nor the next. When the third day passed without a glimpse of him, I was ready to swallow my pride. Every time I recalled the tableau he had surprised on the Gaol verandah on that night, I shivered with chagrin. What cruel fate had prompted him to discover me thus, on the one and only occasion on which I had ever approached Charles with anything like open affection? There could be no doubt of the interpretation he had put on our unfortunate embrace, and I fretted with anxiety to make myself right in his eyes again, wishing I had allowed Charles to run after him and force him to return for an explanation. Yet, what explanation could I make that would not give the impression that I had discovered that I must have him, Hassanganj or no? And was that so? Was it not better to leave him in the belief that I had in truth found a more acceptable alternative?

Confused, wounded by his readiness to believe the worst of me, forgetting, as usual, the excellent grounds I had given him for doing so, dismayed by the panic which filled me as day followed day without his coming, the most cruel fact I had to contend with was, naturally, the misunderstanding. If intimacy between us was to end and our love come to nothing despite its promise, it must not be a mistaken impression that dealt the death blow. He must know, whatever the consequences, that I had not betrayed him. I knew his pride and I knew how much that particular wound would fester. But how could I right matters if, as it seemed, he would not allow me the opportunity?

Then Sir Colin Campbell intervened to make the matter only worse.

On the 12th November, the semaphore was very active and word seeped through to us that Sir Colin had signalled his intention to march from the Alum Bagh to the Dilkusha on the morning of the 14th. The Dilkusha was another of the great, shabby palaces of Oudh, set in a deer park of old and lovely trees, and Sir Colin intended to occupy it before making the final push past the Martinière and across the canal to the Residency. Immediately this message was received, an order went out that neither officers nor men were to leave their posts, day or night, until the relief was finally effected. The enemy, we were told, and in particular the defeated sepoys from Delhi who had poured into Lucknow after Delhi had fallen to General Nicholson, had sworn an oath to take our position with a last great assault and to kill every soul in the place before Sir Colin could reach us.

At night now, the usual cacophony of gunfire and musketry was heavier than it had been for weeks, accompanied by the monotonous drums, the long mooings of conch shells, buglers practising their calls, and often a sudden surge of sound as a whole phalanx of Muslim pandies burst into a screamed warcry of
‘Din! Din! Din!’
that would die to an angry mutter, then be taken up again as the loyal sepoys on our side of the wall yelled out in concerted defiance,
‘Kump’ny ki Jai! Kump’ny ki Jai!’
(Long live the Company!)

Even Toddy-Bob obeyed the order, though probably not for the right reason, and Kate, Jessie and I saw no more of him than we did of Oliver, Charles, Wallace Avery or any of our other friends. Charles sent messages and dropped in once or twice to see the baby, but they were hurried visits. Pearl was seven months old now, thinner than a child of that age should have been, but of an equable and sunny disposition. She crawled around the floor almost as rapidly as her elders could walk, had learned to pull herself upright with the help of stools and boxes, and anything she could hold in her hands was immediately conveyed to her mouth. On one of his hasty visits to his daughter Charles informed me hesitantly that he had seen Oliver the previous night.