Zemindar (44 page)

‘It is not for us to apportion the blame.’

‘Oho! How righteous we do sound! But you’re right, I suppose. She’s a child and he’s a schoolboy. They should have left marriage to men and women. As it is, they’ll always find someone else to pull their chestnuts out of the fire, someone else they can blame, someone else they can turn to for … comfort. It will be enough that the world considers them a “lovely young couple”. They’ll play up to the idea as best they can and in the end believe it themselves. Their grandchildren will be convinced they were always a most devoted pair, yet they won’t have exchanged an idea, or a tender word in forty years.’

‘What an odious picture of marriage.’

‘Isn’t it?’ he agreed virtuously. ‘And yet a very common one.’

‘I hope you are wrong.’

I should have got up and left then.

Oliver rose and strolled back to the fireplace, glass in hand.

‘Laura?’ He turned and faced me but kept his eyes on his glass as he twirled it thoughtfully between his fingers. ‘I have been watching you while you have been here, more than you know. I have learnt how ill-equipped you are to play second fiddle to anyone, least of all Emily. I admire the way in which you try to do your duty, whatever your true feelings are for her and her husband. I see that you have courage; that you are practical and sceptical and yet at the same time a little prone to romance. I enjoy the dogged, ridiculously confident way you manage the storms in your teacup of life. And I like the instinct that enables you to swallow the unpleasant facts of existence, get what nourishment you can from them, and spit out the rest. The one thing I cannot admire, cannot understand, is how you can continue to fool yourself that … that you love Charles!’

I stood up swiftly.

‘I cannot help what you think—however wrongly. I do not need to hear your thoughts!’ And I would have opened the door but that he reached it before me.

‘Come now, you do not need to deny it to me. You cannot! Oh, I know it’s hopeless, that no one has ever yet been argued out of a wrongheaded passion, myself included. But I’m not censorious, Laura. If he was worth a damn, I’d probably help you to get him! But why cannot you see? You’ve too much sense to love a soft yellow moustache and nice blue eyes indefinitely. Think now, just think of how atrociously dull he’ll be in ten years’ time. Charles reached his zenith when he became head boy of his school. He’ll never do better, never want more. He’ll not learn new interests, never entertain a new idea, never question the validity of his old ones. The world turns round the worthy, dull, dutiful, unimaginative men like Charles, but God help the women who do, and you, Laura, could not put up with it for very long. Charles will never develop, Laura. He’ll only grow old.’

‘What makes you think you have the right to talk to me like this? To impute what you do, and about your own brother? And what flight of fancy leads you to suppose that I will encourage you by discussing it? It is very late. Will you please allow me to leave the room.’

He did not move from the door, and his eyes watched me with a disinterested yet earnest enquiry, as one might view a familiar but unexamined object in a microscope—desiring knowledge yet hoping for no surprise.

‘I suppose I cannot expect you to agree with me—yet. But tell me just one thing. What do you intend to do with your life? Are you content to go on dancing attendance on Emily for ever, because it is the only way you can be near Charles? Is that what you want?’

‘My future can be of no possible concern to you. Will you please open that door!’

He shrugged, sighed, moved aside and opened the door.

His face wore an expression of mingled impatience and resignation. As I made to leave the room, he stopped me once again.

‘Before you go, Laura, I ask you most earnestly; use all the influence you have on getting Charles and Emily to leave here as soon as possible. There is trouble coming. That you must believe. I do not know whether I could guarantee their safety in Hassanganj. I have no fears for myself, but we could be cut off, isolated. And in Emily’s condition …’

‘But how can you be sure? All these rumours, and they are nothing more than rumours after all.’

‘No, you are wrong. It is much more than rumours now. Ungud brought me news that I cannot ignore. Whatever it is that is a-brewing will boil over before the monsoons, that is within the next two months. It is still possible that it will be no more than a storm in a teacup; that is the view of most of the authorities who, unfortunately, have our governance in their hands. But I cannot agree with them. I do not want the Floods or yourself here for a day longer than is absolutely necessary.’

‘I see.’

‘No, I don’t suppose you do really. Why should you? Most people, including Charles, would consider it crazy to go by the gossip of the roads, the judgement of an old pensioner like Ungud and my own formless intuition. Yet, I trust my own conclusion. I want you to trust it too, and to believe that there is real urgency now; that you must leave here very soon.’

He spoke with great earnestness, his amber eyes full of purpose.

There could be no doubt that he wanted us away in a hurry. No doubt, also, that whatever information he had received from the pensioner Ungud added to that desire. Yet I could not at the same time avoid the suspicion that the wish to be rid of the woman who had discovered him in flagrant moral cupidity, despite the insouciance with which he had earlier treated the matter, contributed to his urgency.

As it happened, there was no need for me to use my persuasive powers on my cousins. The following night at dinner, Charles announced, quite as though he had come upon the idea himself, that Emily and he felt it would be wiser to go to the hills in view of the unpleasant heat to which Lucknow was subject during the summer months.

‘Very wise. Very wise,’ said Mr Erskine gravely, while I concentrated on my plate. ‘When do you think of going?’

‘We don’t wish to cut short our visit to Hassanganj too much, of course. If you can put up with us, that is: the middle of the month will give us plenty of time to see ourselves comfortably established in Mussoorie before the, er, event.’

‘Would it not be wiser to leave yourselves more time? I can make the arrangements in a couple of days.’

‘Oh, I don’t think so. Emily and I have discussed the matter thoroughly. She feels she would sooner stay here and, in any event, there is no social life in the hills before the end of April, we hear, and we would not like to be long alone in a strange town.’

‘As you will,’ said our host resignedly. ‘I will see to the
dak
arrangements and provide palanquins for the ladies. I take it you will prefer to ride, Charles?’

‘Of course!’ agreed Charles, though I was certain he was inwardly appalled at the idea of riding two or three hundred miles through a strange country.

‘Only two weeks more in dear Hassanganj, Oliver,’ sighed Emily. ‘I shall hate to leave it.’

‘Then you must come back before you sail for home,’ replied Oliver gallantly, and there the matter rested.

Day by day the heat mounted—inexorably, swiftly, palpably. Now, from seven in the morning until five in the evening, the house was darkened by split-cane blinds, called
chiks
, hung round the verandahs to keep out the glare, while doors and windows were further shielded by screens woven of the aromatic
kus-kus
root kept damp and sweet-smelling by the spray from the
bhisti
’s goatskin waterbag. Great earthenware pots filled with water were placed in each room to lower the temperature by evaporation,
punkahs
flapped overhead all day and all night, and the ceaseless slap and swaying frayed the nerves only less than the sudden knowledge that the movement had stopped.

We rode now at half-past five in the morning when already the heat would be uncomfortable. It became too hot for needlework, too hot for study, too hot to walk in the garden, and when we wrote letters home the perspiration rolling down our wrists smudged the ink on the paper. Emily became too listless even to be cross. She spent the greater part of her time by the north window of her darkened upstairs room, rereading old novels while her
ayah
fanned her. Charles, making the most of his chances, spent all his time with Oliver, going where Oliver went, doing what Oliver did, very much to his own discomfort. And pointlessly, as I knew. He was raw with sunburn, and soon developed prickly heat in the joints of his arms and legs. Accustomed to the Indian sun all his life, dark complexioned, lean and active, Mr Erskine showed no ill-effects as the temperature mounted, and continued his usual routine with few concessions to the time of year. I sometimes wondered whether he would have shown the same hardihood had Charles not been present; more than once I detected a gleam of sardonic enjoyment in his eyes as he announced some energetic plan for the day and then added politely, ‘And of course you would like to come too, Charles.’

The preparations for our departure were put in hand, the bullock-carts for our luggage and the palanquins for ourselves examined, repaired, cleaned and finally pronounced acceptable. Runners were despatched to reserve relief coolies at each of the many stages, and bookings were made in the
dak
-bungalows along the road. At this time of year, with so many families moving north to the hills, it was necessary to arrange everything beforehand. All our many trunks, bandboxes and carpetbags were brought up from the cellars and, while I directed the
ayahs
in the correct folding of gowns, stuffing our bonnets with tissue paper and wrapping our slippers in muslin, I discovered an odd ambivalence within myself regarding our going.

I was in Emily’s room, emptying her closet, and the two
ayahs
were busy with the drawers of a tallboy.

‘It hardly seems like four months, does it, Em?’ I said. ‘In some ways it has gone so quickly.’

‘Much too quickly. I wish we were right at the beginning again—in December, when there were fires at night and the mustard fields were in bloom. Oh, I wish we had just arrived! I know I shall hate the hills. And I hate leaving here—and Oliver.’

‘He has asked you to come back.’

‘For a visit! What good is that? No, I have been hoping all this time that perhaps he would ask Charles to stay on here—for good.’

‘But why should he?’

‘It would be the sensible thing to do, if he meant to make Charles his heir. Charles would have to learn about the running of the estate, after all, and what better master could he have than Oliver? I had hoped so much, even though I knew it was not reasonable, and prayed every night that Oliver would say something about it before we left. Oh, I know it’s silly. I know Charles has no real right to Hassanganj … to expect anything more from Oliver. But … well, I have been happy here. Happier than I ever was since we left home … since I got married. I don’t know why. Charles said once it was because I was flattered. Because I enjoyed living in a “vulgar luxury”—those were his words—that he could never provide me with! Perhaps he’s right. I don’t know.’

I was silent at my work and felt unwisely wise. Poor Emily! Of course she was flattered. The way Oliver Erskine treated her—the gifts, the gentle consideration, his almost excessive thoughtfulness—would flatter any woman. No doubt he had used the very same methods to preserve the contentment of those shadowy young ladies who had ‘visited’ him for protracted periods in his youth, the wiles of a sophisticated and unscrupulous man. And Emily had fallen victim to them, as surely as had the shabby little adventuresses he had once employed them on. I looked intently at my cousin, leaning back in a big chair, wearing only a loose wrapper, with her hair down her back, and realized, as I should have realized long before, that her expression, so malleably sweet, so yearningly soft, was the expression of a woman in love. Of a woman in love with Oliver Erskine.

Well, now here’s a pretty kettle of fish, I thought to myself ruefully, for I was not seriously worried. I felt I knew Emily. She had always been susceptible to the other sex, had always enjoyed using her feminine arts upon them. She had dreamed herself in and out of love with every neighbourhood boy from the time she was fourteen. Certainly she was now a married woman who should know better, but her marriage was unhappy, she was still very young—and the object of her affections was Oliver Erskine. I knew his opinion of Emily, and I knew that any misery her ill-directed affection caused her would be her own doing. But we would be leaving Hassanganj in three days. Once away from our host’s immediate ambience, Emily’s fancied passion would soon wane and, as soon as the baby came, Oliver, his gifts and his attentiveness would be thrust into the same limbo of her mind which held her memories of the boys of Mount Bellew. But I was glad our departure was to be so soon, all the same.

The next afternoon Emily and I had
tiffin
alone. The men had ridden over to the McCrackens’ plantation so that Charles could make our farewells, and we did not expect them back until dinner, indigo being a subject that absorbed Oliver as much as it did the McCrackens.

‘I’m rather glad Toddy-Bob is to come with us to the hills,’ said Emily. ‘I don’t like the wretched little fellow—do you remember how rude he was to Charles at the Residency that night?—but at least he is dependable. I should hate to make that long journey with only black people around us. Toddy at least speaks English!’

‘Of a sort,’ I admitted. Though I had grown quite fond of Toddy myself, I could not admire his original syntax. Recently he had not ridden out with his master when Oliver’s duties took him away from the house, and I had become accustomed to his subdued whistle on the verandah whenever Emily and I were at home. Ishmial with his curved
tulwar
, his bandolier across his velvet chest, and those fiercely curled whiskers, now took the place of the little man behind Oliver. I had a well-founded suspicion that Toddy-Bob had been appointed our watchdog.

After lunch we went to our rooms. I had held out for as long as possible against the Anglo-Indian habit of spending every afternoon in bed and asleep, but the gathering heat had defeated me. Now, when the whole house was filled with a heavy, hot somnolence and nothing stirred in the sun-deadened park, I too went to my bed, unlaced my stays, kicked off my slippers and fell into a deep uneasy sleep.