Zemindar (119 page)

‘I don’t mind how long it takes, but you mustn’t on any account miss your
tiffin
. If you do find him, and bring me back a reply to my chit, I will give you a rupee … and many, many thanks.’

‘No need for money, miss! But biscuits for Sonny while I’m gone?’

‘Lots of them … and for you, Llew. Take some now and there’ll be more when you get back. I’ll take good care of Sonny.’

‘Sonny’s not very clever yet, miss. Too small. If he goes off, he’ll get lost, and then what?’

‘He won’t get lost, Llew. I won’t let him. We’ll play games and I’ll tell him a long story. I’ll make quite sure he does not stray too far.’

‘All right! I’ll go then.’

The Colonel Tucker with whom Charles was acquainted had kindly provided us with an assortment of unfamiliar goodies, among them the biscuits with which I was so lavish, and a box of notepaper that included the new ready-folded letter covers called envelopes. Hastily I wrote a note:

O.

I must speak to you, see you.

Please come. Something to explain.

        
L.

I had neither wafer nor wax, but I tucked the sheet inside the neat little paper packet under Llew’s interested eyes, and sent him off with it. Even if curiosity proved too much for the boy and he read what I had written, I had committed no great indiscretion.

Rather sooner than I had schooled myself to expect, Llewellyn was back.

‘Oh, man!’ (This was an expletive among the boys, not a form of address.) ‘Man! He’s way out in the new lines, near the 9th Cavalry. Miles and miles and miles away. But I found him, and, miss, he gave me a rupee for bringing you this.’

Llew thrust a paw into a pocket and produced the same envelope I had entrusted to him earlier; it now enclosed another sheet of paper. I drew it out with hasty fingers as the boy watched.

Explanations are only less embarrassing than apologies.

The writing was unfamiliar and, for a moment, I feared my note had been delivered to the wrong party. Then I remembered that Oliver now wrote with his left hand, and his calligraphy was necessarily less than well-formed.

‘Are you very tired, Llew?’

‘Now! But maybe after
tiffin
I won’t be.’

‘Will you come back after you have eaten and take another note for me? Please? It’s very important.’

‘Man! Again? Oh, all right then, miss. This time I’ll take Sonny; we will pass the elephant lines and he will like that.’

Thus, usually through Llewellyn, occasionally through Toddy-Bob, once or twice by Ungud, I managed to institute a private mail service between Oliver and myself.

I have the letters still. Mine on the fine deckle-edged sheets from Colonel Tucker’s box, Oliver’s scrawled on the coarse absorbent native paper, on leaves torn from old ledgers or later on the monogrammed sheets from some officer’s brass-bound military chest, all now almost split where they were folded and bearing still the marks of their frequent anguished handling. I have them all.

On that first afternoon, I replied to Oliver’s curt, dismissive words with frank importunity. I could not afford to allow myself to be put off by the tone of his note.

Perhaps. But sometimes quite necessary. Thank you for
the mare. She is named Rosinante—more excellent a
beast than Bucephalus. Please come to me. Please! L.

I think it better not to for the moment. Unravelled
emotions are tedious things to knit together again.
Allow me time. I am glad the mare was useful to you
all. O.

You are being childish, Oliver. Obstinate. Nursing
your quite mistaken jealousy. Sulking like a pettish
girl. I have an injured foot. Were I whole I would seek
you out. To shake you. L.

Have you not already shaken me enough? I trusted
you to know your own mind—at last. O.

I do, I do. More so now than when we spoke together
on Germon’s roof. The rest is so easily explained. Do
let me? L.

Perhaps your ability to explain is not matched by my
ability to understand. Have we not understood each
other without words sometimes—before? O.

Often and so sweetly. But now there are certain facts
of which you are unaware. L.

Facts are largely what one makes of them, are they
not? Time, Laura. Time. O.

But we have so little time left. I am very lonely and
rather frightened. My foot is most painful. Can you
not tell me at least why you will not come to me? L.

Because of the loneliness, the sense of unaccustomed
isolation to which you have introduced me. I have
known little real loneliness until now. I find, with some
annoyance, as you may guess, that in overthrowing
my heart, you have invaded my mind. With you I
found, for a time, a degree of companionship that I
have seldom known with a man, never hoped for in
a woman. I will not write like a romance-ridden stripling. I know I can find the comforts necessary to my
sex and nature in other arms. But never the ease of
mind that I have known with you. Yet, you have told
me you cannot share my life in the way in which I
must live it.

I understand something of your revulsion for this
country and its people; I can sympathize with your
desire for the quiet familiarity of England; I can even
believe that Charles will prove an adequate husband
to you in the circumstances you seem to desire.

Forgive me, if, having come to this conclusion, I
prefer not to reopen a wound which needs only continued neglect to heal. O.

The length of this note comforted me, despite the brusque dismissal of its closing.

A couple of days after the evacuation of the Residency, the enormous camp at the Dilkusha was moved on the few miles to the Alum Bagh Palace. In the early hours of the day on which we travelled, Sir Henry Havelock died in the arms of his son, and, so it was said, with a prayer on his lips. I cannot pretend that the camp was plunged into instant mourning. Havelock had been too distant and cold a man for his death to elicit much emotion amongst us. Yet, as we paused in our packing on hearing the news, I was aware of an unhappy irony in his demise at that particular moment—the ultimate failure, as it were, for a man to whom failure, for all his Christian mouthings, was synonymous with shame. His body was carried to the Alum Bagh and late that night buried in secrecy beneath a tree, without headstone or marker, so that whatever force might overrun the park in battles yet to come Sir Henry’s mortal remains might rest undisturbed.

Assembled in the Alum Bagh once again, the camp was re-erected and, for a further four days of cool November sunshine we waited for the order to march onward to Cawnpore. The women were sufficiently recovered in spirits to grumble vocally at the long delay, but Sir Colin, ‘Old Crawling Camel’ as his troops called him, would not be hurried by complaints. The Alum Bagh must first be secured against the enemy, while General Outram, with four thousand men of all arms, deployed his force over a three-mile front to keep the rebels of Lucknow at bay until we women had been safely escorted to Cawnpore and Sir Colin could return and make battle for the city.

My foot was healing, but I still spent much time in a canvas chair. Through long afternoons, when doves called in the neems to remind me of Hassanganj, when hoopoes pecked at the earth at my very skirt, and the odd shabby peacock dragged its dusty tail across the scarred grass in safety only because we were now sufficiently fed, the great pink palace of the Alum Bagh stood bathed in golden light, dappled with the shifting shadows of its tall surrounding trees. Around me the myriad noises of the vast camp would hush to a languorous murmur, only the schoolboys and myself eschewing our cots and the afternoon sleep; and I would sit with my box of paper on my knee and remember and think and carefully choose the words and tone that I guessed must dictate the future course of my life.

It was on the first of these peaceful afternoons that Llew brought me Oliver’s first communicative note. Promising to return for my answer in an hour, he had run off, jumping over the guy ropes of tents, whooping rudely like a baboon at smaller children he encountered on the way, pausing to kick a speculative toe at some gleaming object in the dust, or leaping suddenly upwards to snatch a clump of leaves from a low-hanging branch. Every line, every muscle in his small tawny body was informed with a singing zest in living that could be expressed only in exuberant movement. I smiled as I remembered the quiet, forlorn waif who had helped me so often in the hospital. He seemed to have forgotten all the terrible things he had seen so short a time before; even the memory of his lost father had receded from his mind.

I read Oliver’s letter once again, then set about composing my reply:

Very well then. Do not come yet. Perhaps for all my
desire to speak to you, it is better so. But let me continue, at least, to reach you through these notes; do
not put an end to them.

Why are you still so mistrustful of my feeling for
Charles? I have told you there is nothing between us
and there isn’t, despite what you think you saw on the
Gaol verandah. Here is what happened that night
when you found us embracing. Make of it what you
will.

We had all been out to view the beacon lit here, on
this Alum Bagh palace. I strayed away from the
others—following the walls, enjoying the night and
the strange scene of the entrenchment in darkness.
Well, the long and the short of it is that I was
attacked … assaulted, I believe is the technical term,
by a wretched man with whom I had some unpleasant
dealings in the hospital. Fortunately, Charles had come
in search of me, and I was rescued with nothing more
than my pride injured. Afterwards, we talked. Of you
and of me, of the fact that I loved you. At the end, in
a sort of sentimental gratitude, and because I know
that Charles does love me in his way and I was sorry
to have to hurt him, I reached up and kissed him on
the cheek. That is what you found me doing. That is
all
that I was doing. But you strode off in a jealous
rage and for two wretched weeks have been nursing
your misconceptions and brooding over a wrong I
never did you.

I had come to the end of the page. I scrawled ‘PTO’ at the edge of the paper and turned it.

My heart and intentions did change once, and an uphill
struggle it was for them to do so. It took months,
literally months, for me to concede that you had good
qualities, let alone that they were those I wished for
in a husband. Perhaps it will not take as long for me
to be persuaded I was mistaken. L.

Almost before I had time to hope for Llew’s return I found myself opening Oliver’s reply.

As to Charles, I am sorry if I have been mistaken all along, but allow me to point out that it was a justifiable mistake. I have tried to explain to you why I feared your feelings for him. I had said, once, that the only thing that would prevent me from pursuing my suit would be your own admission that you preferred Charles. What I saw that night on the Gaol verandah (and interpreted wrongly, as you assure me) appeared admittance enough of your preference. So I kept my word and bothered you no further. Now, well, now we have discovered that it is not alone Charles, your feeling for him, my mistake regarding that feeling, that stands in our way, have we not?

By the by, Toddy tells me of your scarlet slippers.
He does not think it proper for you to be wearing
them. O.

Let there be peace between us now. There is no time
for quarrelling. Tomorrow we march for Cawnpore.
In a week or so we will be in Allahabad; then the
steamers down to Calcutta and the ship home. Remember how few steps we have left. We still have
obstacles to surmount, but if they are to be surmounted, let it be by these notes and soon, and not
by the tardy Overland Mail. I have spent such aeons
of my life waiting for news of you, news from you.
Waiting for you. I could not do it again. No, I will
not do it again!

You do not care for apologies and neither do I. Let
me, however, ask your forgiveness now for any hurt
I have done you, and believe it was unwitting. I am
so fatally good at giving the wrong impression. On
the Gaol verandah you got the impression from my
actions that I cared for Charles too much; and on
Germon’s roof you gained the impression that I cared
for you too little. The first, I hope, is cured and finished
with; but the second …? I shudder when I realize how
little understanding I had that evening of what you
wanted to give me, of how callow was my response
to your gift. Yet, believe me, I have learned something,
a good deal, of life and you and of myself, even in the
few weeks since that long conversation.