Zemindar (50 page)

I remember the day Emily got dressed and came down for breakfast for the first time—Sunday the 10th of May.

None of us had expected to see her and it was with relief that I greeted her appearance, for otherwise I would have had to endure once again the chastening experience of being the sole audience (alone I could hardly be termed a congregation) of Charles’s weekly prayer meeting. Oliver had been polite enough to stay and hear the lessons and collects read by his brother for the first two or three Sundays after Christmas of our stay, but had then decided that Sunday morning was the only time in the week when he could give the elephants from the indigo factory the sort of attention they needed;
mahouts
these days were not what they had been, and the elephants’ welfare could not be left to chance. So that had left me, during the time that Emily was indisposed, with the sole responsibility for the heartfelt ‘Ah-mens’ that Charles expected.

That evening, when the sun had set, Charles took Emily out in her little white governess cart for an airing. As we watched them go slowly down the drive, Emily’s white dress glimmering ghostlike in the dusk, Oliver said: ‘Well, thank God for that. It won’t be long now before I can get you all out of the place.’

‘Oh, but she’s not fit to travel yet,’ I exclaimed. ‘She’s up and about, but she has no strength, Oliver. And we can’t take the risk of her … of her not …’

‘Not being able to feed the child,’ he offered helpfully.

‘Precisely. I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with us for some time yet.’

‘How much time, Laura? Before she can be put into a palanquin and sent to the hills? It will mean very little exertion for her—I’ll see to that.’

‘A fortnight, three weeks perhaps. I’m doing my best, Oliver. I’m trying to build her up, making her eat and so on. But we can’t take risks.’

‘Ha!’ exclaimed my host rudely. ‘Risks, the woman says!’

‘Oh, do be sensible,’ I said irritably. ‘For the last three months you men have done nothing but rumble and grumble to anyone who would listen to you about the trouble that is to come, but be honest now, and admit that in all this time there has not been even one really significant incident here, let alone an alarming one. I declare, I am tired of the whole business, all this hurried coming and going, the alarms and rumours, the atmosphere of tension and … and fear, and nothing ever happening!’

‘Would you want something to happen?’

‘No, of course not, and I don’t believe it will either. I’m not going to force Emily beyond her strength for the sake of your … your forebodings. You must just put up with us until I feel she is fit to travel.’

‘Laura?’

‘Well?’

‘Is it only because of Emily’s health that you are so reluctant to leave Hassanganj?’

‘Certainly! What other reason could I have?’

‘I can think of a couple. Leaving Hassanganj is the first of a series of steps that in the end will mean your severance from Charles. I have not forgotten that you intend to leave Mount Bellew and take up an—ah—“position”, I believe you termed it, when you get back to England.’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake! Use your common sense,’ I flung at him without bothering to contradict his assertion.

‘No? Not that? Well then, could it be, I wonder, that you have become fond of … the place?’

‘Well, yes, I have. In a way. I like it here. And I’ll never live in this way again, I suppose. I’ll miss it. But not enough to want to stay on here once we can get away without endangering Emily,’ I added firmly.

‘Ah, well. It was just a thought. Pity. I’ll miss you too, you know,’ he said after a time. ‘And I don’t mean all of you: just you yourself.’

‘I can’t think why,’ I said morosely. ‘I’ve done nothing but bicker with you since we arrived.’

‘That’s what I’ll miss, I expect. I’ve enjoyed having a sparring partner.’

‘Then you’d better find another,’ I said ungraciously.

The governess cart was in view again, and I went out to meet it, leaving Mr Erskine puffing his cheroot on the verandah.

Then, a couple of mornings later, Charles dropped his hat into a shallow pool covered with scum and waterlilies when he was out after green pigeon. By now he seldom went out shooting—the heat made the sport less than inviting—but Emily had expressed a desire for jugged pigeon, and he had gone out to shoot her some birds. If he had used his common sense, he would have returned immediately after losing his hat, but doggedly he had ridden on through the open fields from grove to grove in pursuit of his quarry, and by the time he had got back to the house, not only were his face and neck beetroot red, but he was ill with headache and nausea.

‘Sun stroke—but mild,’ commented his brother without sympathy, and Charles was put to bed with a pad containing crushed ice on his head, and a lump of rocksalt to suck. I had fetched the salt myself from the sack in the cellar where it was kept, not knowing the use to which it was to be put; when I did, I protested that it would make poor Charles even more thirsty than he was.

‘Probably,’ concurred Oliver, ‘but it will cure him of the sun. I don’t know how or why, but I know it does. My grandmother used this remedy on me more than once, and I’ve seen the villagers use it too. Stop clucking and stick it in his mouth!’

Knowing better than to quarrel with the nostrums of Oliver’s grandmother, I did as I was told.

‘He’ll be up in a couple of days, which is more than he deserves for his lack of sense,’ said the elder brother, while the younger groaned piteously through the lump of pinkish salt, unable to open his eyes because of the swollen state of the lids.

‘Poor Charles!’ I whispered.

‘Silly fool!’ said Oliver, and we withdrew to let him sleep.

That same evening, Toddy-Bob brought us the news of Meerut. He had been sent into Lucknow for some much-needed articles for the baby and Emily, although I knew that Oliver had been reluctant to let him go. Covered with dust and sweat, he burst into the drawing-room where Oliver and I were sitting together in uneasy domesticity after dinner, and before even pulling his tall hat from his head, blurted out: ‘It’s happened, guv’nor! They’re up! They turned on their h’officers and slaughtered the lot of ’em—women and nippers too! Word come of it on Wednesday, and I rode back like ’ell’s blazes as soon as I’d foraged things out!’

‘No doubt, Toddy?’

Oliver had got to his feet, and the two of us had our attention riveted on the small dirty man, his eyes popping in excitement and his hands clawing convulsively at his ridiculous headgear.

‘No doubt, guv!’

‘Sure it’s not just a bazaar rumour?’ Oliver repeated as Toddy-Bob strove to collect sufficient saliva in his mouth to enunciate his words.

‘No, no rumour, guv’nor, s’elp me! It’s Gawd’s own truth! Massacred the lot of ’em, the dirty ’eathen bastards, shot their h’officers on the parade ground, fired the ’ouses in cantonments, and set free the prisoners.’

‘When?’

‘Last Sunday. On a
Sunday
, guv’nor!’ He was as shocked as if he were a devout Christian and believed the world contained only others like himself.

‘What else?’ Oliver’s lack of excitement made me want to shake him. Surely this was not the time to be so clinical, so detached.

‘There’s been trouble in the lines in Lucknow, already, and they say as ’ow the women, ladies that is, ’as all to go and get theirselves shut up in the Baillie Guard. S’truth, guv’nor.’ Toddy wiped his forehead with his sleeve. ‘The
chowks
are like all ’ell broke loose with people sayin’ this and that and the other, but there’s big trouble already, and what they say in the bazaars is only the beginning! They say—in the bazaars—that the ’eathen soldiers from Meerut ’ave gone on to Delhi, guv’nor!’

Toddy’s boot-button eyes almost left their sockets as he imparted this intelligence.

‘That’s unlikely, anyway. They’d have been stopped before they got to Delhi. Meerut has more white troops than any other cantonment in the province.’

‘Yeah.’ Toddy was entirely unconvinced. ‘But that’s what they say!’

‘Well, if that’s all, Tod, you’d better go and get something to eat.’

‘
All
!’ muttered Toddy bitterly, as he moved to the door.

‘Ah! And Tod …’

‘Guv’nor?’

‘I think you had better have a dram or two tonight. For your health’s sake.’

‘Gawd bless you, guv’nor!’ said Toddy fervently, and closed the door. The ecstasy on his face at receiving permission to drink was more than even the gravity of his news could counter, and I was smiling as Oliver came back to his chair.

‘I trust we will not have to call on him for help tonight,’ he said, ‘for he’ll take my dram or two to mean a bottle or two.’ Then, more soberly, ‘Well it’s come then, Laura. Here is the alarming incident you were talking about, and if even half of what Tod has heard is true, it is very alarming indeed.’

‘Meerut is an important place then?’

‘The main depot of several of the Queen’s regiments, and also of some native regiments. If officers have actually been killed, and I think that much is true, then it is mutiny of the Army. All the Army, I expect. At least in this province. And from there, it must spread.’

He sounded tired and depressed, and for the first time I actually believed that he was in danger of losing his home, his estates, all that made his life worth living.

‘You’ll have to stay now willy nilly,’ he said. ‘If you could get away tomorrow, there might be a chance for you to reach Mussoorie before the thing spreads. But with Emily, and now Charles, laid up, damn him, I suppose that’s out of the question?’

‘I’m afraid so. Oh, Oliver … I know we must be a wretched burden on you at such a time. I wish it had happened otherwise.’

‘Can’t be helped. We must just make the best of it.’

Though Toddy-Bob had been emphatic that his intelligence was correct, it was still possible for me to withhold belief that British women and children had been slaughtered along with their menfolk. It was not that I was sufficiently sentimental to think that sex or age could materially alter the gravity of murder; it was just that nothing in my admittedly limited dealings with the natives had borne even a shadow of suspicion or animosity, and I hesitated to think them capable of deeds which I would have been reluctant to ascribe to my own race. So I was not frightened for myself, or indeed for the Floods. More cogent was the fact that Oliver Erskine, a white man, was in possession of a large tract of India which would most understandably be coveted by Indians, should the mutiny of the Army spread to the civilian population.

‘What will you do now, Oliver?’ I asked. ‘Or, rather, what would you do if we weren’t here?’

‘Nothing to do. Except wait. Make plans, I suppose, in case the worst comes to the worst and we have to run for it. But that won’t be for some time yet. Perhaps never. Henry Lawrence is a good man, you know. And he’s still in control of Oudh.’

‘Will he be able to handle the
talukhdars
?’

‘God knows. I don’t. I couldn’t handle them myself, that much I know. But that’s because I sympathize with them. Very soon perhaps I’ll be in a position to sympathize with them even more deeply. Funny, isn’t it? And they’ll never realize it because of the accident of my white skin! Have you ever thought, Laura, that almost all the things that divide people from each other are accidental? Colour, race, religion. Which of us can influence how or what we are born? Yet we judge each other by these accidents. If it were not so, if my affections, my understanding, my deepest loyalties, were taken into account, I would be as much an Indian as the Maulvi of Fyzabad himself. But because I have a white skin, they’ll cut my throat with pleasure. And I’m too much of an Indian to blame them for wanting to!’

‘You do really associate yourself with them, don’t you? I mean, haven’t you any loyalty to England?’

‘Some. But I could forget it much more easily than I could forget my affection for Hassanganj. My land, my people, my life are all here. England isn’t important to me. Nor France. But this … this is! This is where I belong, you see, Laura. And no one, neither the white man nor the brown, for very different reasons, can believe that I am honest in saying so.’

I found it difficult to believe him myself. No one could grudge his affection for Hassanganj, nor his pride in it; no doubt the satisfactions he discovered in his isolated life among the Oudh peasantry were, bearing in mind his temperament, more rewarding than anything he could have had in England. But yet? When the moment of severance came, should he ever have to make a final decision one way or the other, would he really find it easy to deny his birth? I did not think he would find it easy; but neither did I think he would find it impossible, as for instance, Charles or any of the other men I had met in India would find it impossible.

‘What are you brooding about now?’ he asked, noticing my silence.

I laughed. ‘As a matter of fact I was thinking about you,’ I answered him. ‘I was wondering what you would really do if it came to the pinch and you had to choose between Hassanganj and your life, perhaps. Or your future anyway.’

‘It is a choice I will never have to make, never fear. Hassanganj is mine, and here I stay.’

‘Even if the
talukhdars
think otherwise; if they run you off the place?’

‘I would very sensibly remove myself for the moment. But I would be back in due course. I have a better title to my land than most of my neighbours have to theirs. They might want it; they’ll probably try to take it, but don’t you see, Laura, whatever is going to happen, whatever form this trouble takes, it can only be temporary? The British have gone too far to withdraw. They are more now, have been more for a couple of generations, than just a parcel of traders defending their right to barter; they have put too much into this country. They have too much to lose to allow themselves to be pushed out. We are the real rulers of the entire peninsula. Alien, bungling, often unsympathetic, we may be, but the thing is a
fait accompli
. In time, the situation will right itself and the British will regain control of Oudh and all India; meanwhile, we all have to suffer the consequences of the apathy, ignorance and stupidity of our people at home. That’s about what it amounts to; let us hope that the lesson we have to learn will not be too hard bought.’