Zemindar (122 page)

Needless to say, I did not revisit the scene. In a way
I find myself glad that you did, however. Now let us
both lay the ghost of the place to rest.

Tomorrow is a new day and a new beginning. In
less than a week we will be in Allahabad, and I fear
my resolution will carry me no further without a sight
of you. Believe, my heart, that it is not a still-distrustful
prudence that keeps me from you, but the certainty
that a glimpse, a few hurried words, probably in the
company of others, will not suffice me now. I would
certainly embarrass you with my ardour! Besides,
though we have resolved our respective difficulties of
Charles and India, much still remains to be said that
never has been said between us … or written. So I shall
stay away for these further few days, until I can have you—to keep you.

I caught a sight of you this morning, walking with
Kate down a dusty sunny street. Limping slightly, you
trudged along in the determined fashion I remember
so well, both of you in the dismal garments you have
worn so long—you with your mushroom of a hat,
Kate in her old black bonnet and carrying her usual
large umbrella. You put me in mind of a plucky small
Bantam hen.

Oliver.

The column that set out from Cawnpore for Allahabad on that cold fresh morning in December was indeed much shorter than the one that had arrived there. It comprised now only the families, the sick and wounded and non-combatants of the Old Garrison, together with a few doctors and apothecary assistants, and was accompanied by a detachment of fighting men for protection. Most of the men who had effected the first relief under Outram remained in Cawnpore for battles yet to come, but the news that ‘Our Men’—the 32nd—were also to be left behind with Sir Colin’s force, was greeted with outrage. Bitter were the farewells between husbands and wives, who had blessed Heaven for allowing them to survive Lucknow together; anguished the grief of children parted at this late hour from fathers they realized too well they were lucky to have had so long. As we moved off, men ran beside the conveyances, still clinging to a wife’s hand, or a child’s, and for long after the last had reluctantly dropped behind, the sound of sobs could be heard, mingled with the more usual cacophony of movement.

When we were a few miles out of Cawnpore, safely threading our way through a flat landscape of fields and frequent villages wrapped in accustomed morning quiet, we heard behind us the great guns of Sir Colin’s force start up in earnest against Tantia Topee.

After that, the journey passed without incident. We slept in pitched camps, made good progress each day, ate adequately, found fresh milk awaiting the children when we halted, and heard guns no more. Of course there were delays, inconveniences and irritations, but there was an air of relaxation, almost of cheerfulness, about the column, despite the sorrow of the women of the 32nd. Halting in the early twilight, we found time to stroll through fields and groves; time, too, to exchange plans, which we at last found the courage to make; to seek out friends and discuss, with some assurance, the return to normal living.

On more than one occasion I glimpsed Oliver aloft on his horse in the distance. I looked my fill but made no effort to attract his attention. A pleasant peace had invaded me, and I was content to wait his coming at what would be, for both of us, the proper time.

Once he was riding beside the cart on which Wallace Avery was travelling, seated between his guards. Oliver, I believe, was attempting to make himself known to Wallace, but Wallace, all unaware, played with his fingers, nodding his head and muttering to himself with vacant smiles, like a child in a private fantasy.

For General Outram and Brigadier Inglis had not, after all, been the last men out of the Baillie Guard, as Charles had told us. Nor yet were either of the two young aides who had lurked behind them, then exited simultaneously from the gate in a rugby tackle, so eager had each been to claim the strange distinction of being ‘last man out’. On that final night, as each post filed silently out through the gate, alone in some bright room in the Brigade Mess, Wallace, stupefied by drink, had slept in ignorance through the whole withdrawal. Hours later, waking to the terror of finding himself the only man alive in the silent ruins, he had run headlong through the deserted lanes, out of the Baillie Guard, through the maze of the palaces and, by good fortune, alone followed the path of the retreat. On the following morning, stragglers from the rearguard had come across him wandering in the fields and brought him on to the Dilkusha. He had managed to tell them what had befallen him, but by the time he reached safety, fear had crazed him, and ever since he had lived in a private world, where he talked endlessly to Connie and Johnny of his plans for sending them to England and listened, with delighted attention, to their replies. We did not learn of this last of poor Wallace’s disasters until we had reached the Alum Bagh. Then Charles had made it his business to see to the comfort of his relative and was often with him. In Charles’s presence, Wallace became, if not rational, at least soothed; to the rest of us he turned a bland but blank eye.

As I watched Oliver bend down from his saddle to talk to Wallace, I remembered the vexatious cause of our interview in Henry Cussens’s bungalow so long ago. That IOU had been returned to me, but debts, it seemed, have always to be paid one way or another. Even by Wallace.

For each of the four days of our march, the letters came and went. No longer a means of explanation only, now they explored, described and dwelt with delight on the passion we discovered for and in each other. Lovers’ letters, truly, they were meant for no other eyes; so I will fold them now and place them again in their box of fruitwood inlaid with mother-of-pearl. But seldom has the world looked more beautiful to me, more full of grace and golden goodness, than in those hard days of travel, my friends safe beside me, a bourne in sight, and in my heart a love confirmed.

Allahabad stands at the confluence of two great rivers of northern India. Built on a promontory, at the very point where the turgid brown waters of the Ganges meet but do not mingle with the limpid blue stream of the Jumna, is the Fort, a massive Mogul structure, adapted and amplified by the British, in which most of us women were housed on our arrival in the town.

It was late afternoon, and the winter sun lay low on the horizon, as we ended our journey. Military bands blared in greeting, banners fluttered, and throngs of troops and civilians lined the roadway, cheering as the convoy entered the great stronghold.

The password for that day, so they told us, was ‘Heroine’.

The waters were awash with bronze and gold, and the ancient stonework of the Fort took on a pinkish glow, as, marvelling, we trod the soft, mown grass between banks of sweetpeas and roses, and looked with silent wonder on a scene of peace and domestic comfort. Allahabad, too, had known its time of tragedy, its massacre of Europeans, its burning of bungalows. But that was in the past. The present was, to us at least, a plethora of unbelievable comforts.

Once again Kate managed to ‘pull strings’ and have us lodged together with old friends. They inhabited fine quarters, whose spreading garden was bounded by the battlements themselves.

I had expected yet another whitewashed barrack, hastily evacuated by its normal occupants for our use. Instead, I was ushered into a spacious bedroom. There was rose-patterned china in the bathroom, and a dressing-room in which a long mirror caught the last of the light and showed me a woman only six months older but a lifetime away from the one who had last surveyed herself in a similar extravagant glass. The brass bed, covered with intricately crocheted cotton, intimidated more than it invited me, and even more frightening was the fact that it stood alone in the room. For the first time in half a year I would be sleeping in a room by myself.

Dinner was to us a lavish meal, but none of us could do justice to it. Mrs Baines clucked and fussed and pressed us to try the various dishes, plying our plates with her own concerned hands. How could she guess that she was the first prettily dressed, assured and tranquil woman we had seen in months? That her gown of ruby silk, and the susurration of her many petticoats, were a greater wonder to us even than the roast duck and lemon tartelettes to which she urged us so insistently? And how could we explain to her the ambivalence of our sensations on finding ourselves at her generous table, holding in our minds the memory of the rickety board on which we had eaten so many unpalatable meals that had become, sometimes, almost sacramental in the sorrow with which we had taken them, or the deep and grateful joy?

Looking at the strained faces of Kate and Jessie, I found in their eyes a reflection of the unease, the oppression that so many unnecessary appurtenances to living produced in my own mind. We shared a sadness and a strange nostalgia for a time, a way of life, even a hardship, that we knew was gone for ever. We were homesick for the Thug Gaol! The comfort in which we so suddenly found ourselves seemed artificial and false.

We had learned how easily one can do without Turkey rugs, curtained lamps and silver spoons. But how could we learn to forgo the companionship, the community of feeling, and the concerted effort that had given such meaning to our lives?

We were encouraged to retire early. Kate, Jess and I kissed each other goodnight quietly and went alone to our strange and solitary rooms. I was not surprised to see tears in Kate’s blue eyes and, having gained the privacy of my apartment, I could not contain my own. I went to the long window and looked out over the still night garden. The scent of nicotiana and stock wafted into the room; trees stirred gently in the river breeze and, beyond the Mogul bastions, the river itself soughed and sighed on its journey to the sea.

Far away in the night, to the north of me, the ruins where in some real sense I had lost my life and found another, where I had learned what friendship is, and fear, and the wisdom of forgetting, those haunted shells of brick and plaster stood bathed in the light of the same waning moon that silvered the grass below me. My heart cried out to them, wanting again the terrible days I had spent in them. More frightened now in safety than I had ever been in siege, I called to them to stay with me, be with me for ever in memory—not as mourning but as inspiration.

Nonsense—you will say, reader—homesick for hardship? And you will be right. It was not the hardship that was necessary, but the impulse to endure, to pit oneself consciously against the outrageous accident of our sufferings, to know that how we confronted our trials dictated how we thought of ourselves, as pawns or human beings. I, at last without the prop of that stringent necessity, was frightened by my weakness. So I wept there at the open window in the moonlight and river-rustle, for days and ways and friends gone for ever, and wished myself safe again in the definition of what they had required of me.

I could not wear the frilled and hand-tucked nightgown and cap laid out on the bed, but put upon myself the ragged cotton I was accustomed to. The comfort of the bed prevented me from sleeping; too used to clamorous nights, I was oppressed by the quiet; for the first time in six months I was truly alone, and the knowledge unnerved me. When at length I fell asleep, I was still weeping.

The first day in safety passed more easily than I had expected when I woke, unrested, to an elegant
chota hazri
served on a silver tray.

I longed impatiently for Oliver, but at the same time almost wished he would stay away—at least until I was respectably dressed. I felt a certain shyness at the thought of seeing him again face to face, and felt that a becoming gown would encourage assurance.

Naturally our shabbiness had not escaped the notice of our hostess, and after breakfast we discovered that
derzis
had been called for to take our measurements, and vendors bearing bales of piece goods, buttons, laces and braids had spread their wares on the verandah for our inspection. Mrs Baines produced a pile of
Lady’s Magazines
, and we were soon lost in the remembered but unfamiliar delights of choosing patterns and fabrics for new gowns.

Not even an Indian
derzi
could be expected to produce a new garment in less than a couple of days, however, so Mrs Baines insisted that two of her own gowns be hastily altered for Kate and myself, while Jessie, large Jessie, was fitted out in a dress of black merino donated by a neighbour.

‘I am so glad I had something suitable—in black,’ the neighbour, Mrs Lyndhurst, remarked, as she laid the gown on a chair, Jessie being too engrossed in fashion plates to try it on immediately.

‘Black?’ Jessie looked her puzzlement. ‘Well,’ she said at length regretfully, ‘the good Lord kens I ha’ forgot I am a widow woman now!’ and pushed away the blue cotton I had been persuading her to choose.

‘Why, so you are—and I!’ Kate looked from Jessie to me. ‘We are in mourning, Jess and I, and had both quite forgotten it.’

She smiled, no doubt at how inconsequential such conventions now appeared to us, but Mrs Baines and her friend regarded her in stony silence, disapproval of her want of proper feeling evident on their faces. Officially I was also in mourning, for Emily, though not as ‘deep’ as that of a widow. But I craved colour, and determined that the exact date of Pearl’s orphaning would remain a mystery until it was too late for reproaches.

Within an hour, the borrowed gowns had been made over to fit Kate and myself, and with them, on our beds, we found the customary accompaniments of petticoats, camisoles, corset covers, pantaloons and stockings, together with a selection of heeled and buttoned boots, delivered by a bazaar shoemaker, from which to make a choice.