Zemindar (12 page)

And so in an atmosphere of the utmost confusion we entered the bungalow just as Connie, unmoved by the uproar, issued on to the verandah to greet us.

She was a tall woman, several inches taller than her husband, and thin to emaciation. It would be kind to say that her hair was auburn, or Titian-tinted, or even red. But not true. It was just plain ginger, faded and lustreless, and straggled out from under her cap in kinky waves. Her complexion was very pale, almost white indeed, and pale blue eyes gazed out apathetically from under sandy brows. She presented us each with a limp hand, murmured that she was pleased to see us, and without further preamble showed us to our rooms and then left us.

‘Isn’t she odd?’ whispered Emily, poking her head in at my door a few moments after our hostess had disappeared. ‘What do you suppose is the matter with her?’

‘The climate,’ I whispered back. ‘She has probably had too much of it.’

‘Poor thing. Of course she has lost lots of children too.’ The Averys had lost five children in India, and the only surviving one, a little boy of three, was extremely delicate. ‘But all the same, she really is queer.’

I could not disagree, and as I tidied myself for breakfast, wondered with some misgivings how Emily would assort with her cousin.

Breakfast, as is very usual in India, turned out to be a social occasion, several of the Averys’ friends and neighbours having been invited to meet the new arrivals and hear the latest reports of Calcutta and England. The table was set on the side verandah, an extraordinary number of courses were produced, all poorly cooked and carelessly served, and Mrs Avery’s sole contribution to the entertainment was to feed the parrot, a large grey bird chained to an iron perch just behind her chair, and to exhort us all to listen as the bird, with a morsel in one horny claw, bobbed its head and said either ‘Thank you, dear,’ or ‘Good girl, Connie, good girl.’

‘And now let’s get acquainted,’ said the lady next to me with determination, when we had all laughed dutifully at the bird for the third time. ‘I’m sure you haven’t taken in Connie’s introductions, so let me say that I am Kate Barry, and that nice kind-looking man up there with the white hair is my husband George. We live on the next road, just a few minutes away, and have known the Averys for years and years. And you are …?’

‘Laura Hewitt, Emily Flood’s cousin.’

‘How do y’do, m’dear. And so this is your first time in India? Yes, you didn’t need to tell me. There is something about the complexion of you girls straight out from Home. One can always tell. “Newcomer, Kate,” said I to myself the moment I clapped eyes on you, and do y’know, m’dear, I rather wish I was in your shoes. I’ve been in India now over thirty years, and I’ve loved every minute of every year—not like some I know,’ she said with a wink in Connie’s direction. ‘Yes, I believe I envy you. I’d like to be starting out all over again, just as you are now. There’s no place like this heathen country, if you can stand the climate, that is. Now me, I’ve only once had a summer in the hills. Couldn’t abide all the silly gossiping females, y’know! I like the men, so I stay in the plains and look after ’em when their wives go to Simla or Mussoorie to preserve their complexions.’

Here she took off her rather battered black bonnet and fanned her face, grinning cheerfully at the company and disregarding Emily’s horrified expression at this breach of decorum.

‘It’s a great comfort being old and ugly,’ she went on. ‘You see, no one suspects me of flirting with their men, and so I can love the dear things as much as ever I want to. George, my husband, y’know, well, he finds me a bit overpowering and takes every opportunity of getting out of the station on exercises and manoeuvres and what not; but that still leaves me with plenty of fine lads around me, and that’s what I like. Never know a dull moment!’

She slapped me on the knee, and roared with laughter—probably at my expression which, I am sure, betrayed surprise.

Mrs Barry wore stout black boots (the other ladies were in the lightest of slippers) and a rusty black dress whose skirt was quite four inches above the ground. Her hair was snow-white, abundant and soft-looking, and framed a brown face as weather-beaten as a mariner’s, from among the multitudinous wrinkles of which a pair of very bright periwinkle-blue eyes looked out benignly with a sort of unsurprised innocence.

The others looked towards us when she laughed, smiling themselves, as her laughter was infectious.

‘Now, now, Kate. Don’t shock Miss Hewitt too much on her first morning in Lucknow. Remember she is not used to you yet.’

‘Away with you, Wallace. I couldn’t shock a fly and well you know it,’ she retorted. ‘Besides, as I always say, if a grown female over the age of sixteen can be shocked by any other female, she’s better off dead. Not that I’m worried about Miss Hewitt here. I imagine it would take a deal to shock her, for all her quiet looks. I’ve just been giving her some of my life story and telling her that India is God’s own country, if you know how to take it.’

‘Oh, Kate, you are always saying that,’ wailed Connie Avery, momentarily diverted from her parrot. ‘But you can’t really think so. I declare I don’t know why I am still alive, I hate it so, and what with all we have to put up with here, the horrid heat and the boils and the cholera and the dust and the white ants and the snakes and the servants, why, we might just as well be dead. Really, Miss Hewitt, if it hadn’t come about that we have at last managed to save some money so that I can go home with little Johnny soon, I declare I
would
be dead!’

‘Nonsense, Connie,’ retorted Mrs Barry firmly. ‘You are always dejected in the mornings. You’ll feel much better by
tiffin
time.’

Connie gave up the unequal battle and returned unenthusiastically to her meal, and I was glad that Wallace, in an effort to distract the company’s attention from his wife’s outburst, had launched into some story about his little son. Then I heard Mrs Barry’s next question.

‘Have you come out to be married, m’dear?’ she asked frankly, licking butter off her fingers.

‘No! Oh, no! I have just come to keep my cousin Emily company, look after her a little. She is very young, and her parents wished it.’

‘Ah, well, that’s a good beginning but I daresay you will get married. Can’t see a good-looking, sensible girl like you remaining single very long with all these men around. Absolutely anyone can get married in India, if they want to—and, after all, who doesn’t? It’s one of the charms of the place, d’you see? But I hope you will be staying in Lucknow and not hurrying off again right away?’

‘No. At least I don’t think so. We plan to be here until Christmas at least.’

‘Well, that will be nice for the rest of us. Lots of jolly things going on here in the winter, y’know. Balls and picnics and shoots and what not. Have you ever been on a shoot, Miss Hewitt?’

I said that I had not.

‘Then I must show you the ropes. Don’t fancy tiger shoots myself, though I go on them, y’know; can’t bear to see those beautiful beasts shot, sometimes trampled by the elephants too, and ending up on someone’s drawing-room floor. Much better leave them where God intended them to be—in the jungle. But I like duck shoots. Generally go with George, though he hates me to, since I won’t let him shoot more than we and our friends can eat. Thinks I’m a contrary old divil because I don’t like waste, and what does shooting three or four hundred duck before breakfast mean if it don’t mean waste? But mark my words, when you have a husband—just learn to put up with all his foolishness and go wherever he goes. That’s the only way you can keep a man out here. I’ve still got mine, though he’s been struggling to escape for years, and only because all this time I have worked with him, played with him, marched with him, got sick with him—we took the smallpox together, back in ’43—shot with him, ridden with him … and even drunk with him,’ she ended with triumph.

It was much cooler than it had been in Calcutta, and the air was dry and pleasant. On the coarse grass of the lawn a hoopoe strutted, head bowed in concentration, intent on a worm; then it made a sudden dart, expanded its crest like a lady flicking open a fan, and gobbled its prey in one greedy mouthful. A gardener squatted by a flowerbed planting out seedlings with m eticulous precision, and little Johnny Avery trotted down the shade-dappled driveway hand-in-hand with his stout, white-clad
ayah.

‘Oh, look! There’s Johnny going for his walk. Ta-ta, Johnny,’ said his mother ineffectually, as the child was too far off to hear, and waved her table napkin at his retreating back.

A silence fell as everyone, rather foolishly, turned to watch the child go; then Kate turned to Wallace and said, ‘By the way, Wallace, didn’t you tell me a short time ago that Mr Flood was acquainted with Oliver Erskine?’

‘Hm?’ Wallace was watching his wife with a sad expression in his protruberant eyes. ‘Hm? Oh, yes, Erskine. Yes, of course, he is Charles’s half-brother, I believe.’

‘Half-brother? Bless me. I didn’t know he had such a relative alive.’

‘My brother and I are not at all acquainted, ma’am,’ said Charles in a rather stuffy tone. I guessed he would have preferred not to discuss his family with a lady who took off her bonnet at the table, laughed so loudly and wore such short skirts, but there was no escape for him.

‘The divil you ain’t,’ said Mrs Barry and regarded him with curiosity more than surprise.

‘I hope to rectify that now.’ It amused me to hear a note of apology creep into his voice under Mrs Barry’s direct gaze. ‘We were brought up in entirely different circumstances and until now have had no opportunity of meeting each other. Making myself known to him is in part the reason for our visit to Lucknow, though so far he has displayed deuced little interest in our movements.’

Then curiosity got the better of Charles’s sense of fitness: ‘You have met him perhaps, ma’am?’

‘Met him? I should say I have. I used to know him well—when he was a lad, y’know, in the days when his grandmother was alive. His grandmother and I were very good friends. She was a fine woman, and I have seen Oliver occasionally since her death. I’m very fond of him,’ and she looked round the table with something like defiance. ‘He’s a difficult divil, mind, and I’m not surprised on the whole that he has taken little notice of you. You’ll be his mother’s son then?’ Charles nodded. ‘Hm. There was that trouble with the Nawab, of course,’ muttered Mrs Barry, no doubt thinking she was addressing only herself but in fact informing the whole table, and then went on aloud: ‘It’s not his way to write letters. I remember the trouble his grandparents had with him when he was at school in France. Does he know you are here?’

‘He was informed by my mother of our plans some months ago, and I have also written to him recently, from Calcutta.’

‘Then he’ll turn up in due course, but only when it suits him.’

I was congratulating myself on my accurate estimate of Mr Erskine’s character, for obviously a man who showed so little consideration for his relatives was both arrogant and conceited, when Emily broke in: ‘We saw a portrait of him in Calcutta. He looks very terrifying, I must say. Is he really so very … plain?’

‘Oh, yes. Plain as a pikestaff. But a man for all that!’ Mrs Barry wagged her white head, chuckled and began to peel an orange.

‘You are speaking of Mr Erskine of Hassanganj?’ The question was put by a Captain Fanning, a blond young man with silly pale eyes and an ingratiating expression.

‘Is there another?’ Mrs Barry chuckled again.

‘I have met him too, on a couple of occasions. Nothing personal, of course, but I did speak to him.’ And Captain Fanning looked round the table with an air of pride so obvious that Charles, not always sensitive in such matters, asked with amusement, ‘Is speech with my brother an accolade then?’

‘Well—you know …’ began Captain Fanning, but another gentleman, an elderly major by the name of Dearden who sat at my right, grunted into his luxuriant grey whiskers and said crossly, ‘Accolade indeed! Chap’s a bounder!’

‘Oh, come now, Dearden.’ Wallace glanced apologetically at Charles. ‘We none of us know him personally. His views are a bit, well—unorthodox, but that’s not enough to make him a bounder.’

Major Dearden bit his moustache and looked as though he would like to disagree; Captain Fanning goggled, and Charles flushed a little. Mrs Barry looked expectantly from face to face, seeming to know that the matter would not rest there.

‘The fact is, y’know, you’ll realize it sooner or later, and I suppose it’s better coming from me’—Wallace’s tone was conciliatory—‘but Erskine is very much his own man. No respecter of convention or, I might add, of other people, or so they say, which naturally does not make for popularity, particularly out here where we are all so dependent upon each other. He’s not often seen in Lucknow, though everyone knows of him of course, and because of his wealth, I suppose, all manner of odd stories have got around about him. He don’t entertain, y’see. If he would even do that much, people would forgive him a lot. But apart from a couple of big shoots each winter for the local planter
-wallahs
near him, he does nothing to show an interest in the rest of us. Just keeps to his estate, which they say he runs as a sort of private kingdom, and they say too that he wears Indian kit, and has a … well, has generally gone native, though I myself don’t believe it, mind. However, there can be no doubt that he knows the native mind and speaks the
baht
like one of ’em. And of course there’s the house—’straordinary place, enormous, and fabulous inside, of course. Everybody dying to have a look in.’

‘I used to know it quite well once,’ said Mrs Barry, not without satisfaction. ‘George and I often went there for the shooting in the winter.’

‘Did you really?’ Emily was clearly intrigued. ‘What is it like then?’

‘Oh, very grand, very grand. Not a bit what one would expect on the very edge of India. Oliver’s grandmother was an artistic woman, you see, something of a connoisseur, and, well, with all that money, she could afford to buy the best. But of course that was years ago. Termites have probably got at it now. Things need so much lookin’ after in this country.’