Zemindar (87 page)

Then his monologue took suddenly a more interesting turn. The enemy, said Ungud, were on the point of making a great assault upon the Residency. There would be no less than eleven thousand sepoys concerned, and they would have the help—‘
they
say,’ said he—of natives within the entrenchment. We had returned to the question of the loyalty of the Sikhs. Perhaps Mr Roberts would, after all, have the satisfaction of being in the right, though if he were, he would have scant time to enjoy his triumph.

We thanked Ungud for bringing us his news, and said we were sorry we could offer him no tea, not having any ourselves. He made the usual deprecatory gesture, palms upwards and a shrug of the shoulders. Then he looked at the floor between his feet for a moment, apparently in deep concentration. Kate, Jess and I regarded him in silence, sure that more was to come.

‘This is not all,’ he said at last, looking directly at me. ‘I have other news, but whether good or bad, I cannot say. It is not the concern of Inglis
Sahib
, or Gubbins
Sahib
, but of us of Hassanganj.’

I watched him attentively.

‘It is said … No!’ He stopped, thought a moment and started again. ‘This I know, it is true, there is an officer, Lieutenant Delafosse, who is now with the General
Sahib
in Cawnpore.’

I could not immediately see any relevance to Hassanganj in this piece of information, but my heart beat faster as I awaited further enlightenment.

‘This officer,’ he went on slowly, his eyes never leaving my face, ‘this officer was at Cawnpore. On the day of the boats.’

So then I understood. One man had survived the Nana’s treachery. But why had Ungud mentioned ‘us of Hassanganj’? I had never heard of Lieutenant Delafosse.

‘Go on, Ungud,’ Kate said quietly. ‘What is it you have to tell us?’

I could not have spoken with such composure. I did not want to hear how Oliver had met his death, even supposing this man Delafosse really knew.

‘With this officer, there were many other men on the boat. Many were wounded, some dead. But the boat, for two days, sailed down the river, and then, though I cannot tell how, when most of them had been killed by the Nana’s men who harried them from the banks, this officer, and some others, all … escaped! He is alone now. And has yet only reached the
bilaiti paltan
in Mangalwar. But, Miss-
sahib
, if he has done so, cannot the others who were with him—four, five, more perhaps—cannot those others reach safety too?’

Still I waited for some word that Oliver had been among the men who had drifted down the river in the single fugitive boat. But when Kate put the question to him directly, Ungud shook his head. He had not himself spoken to Lieutenant Delafosse, but had heard of his presence and this much of his story in the lines. All were speaking of it. It was, and Ungud again turned his eyes on me, it was surely possible that even more of the Nana’s intended victims had escaped, for on that one boat there had been ‘many men’, and Delafosse and his companions, who had somehow managed to drift further down the river on a raft, were not necessarily the only ones left alive.

‘Is it not possible—’ here he wagged his head and hands in concert to emphasize his hope—‘is it not possible that the
Lat-sahib
lives? Surely this can be thought of now?’

During the first part of his recital, though I tried not to allow it, I had known a flicker of hope. By the end I had realized that I was listening to just another
kahani
, those longwinded tales, lacking point or purpose, that are so dear to the Indian heart, and mean so little to the brisker Western mind. Perhaps one man had survived the carnage at Cawnpore. Perhaps even more than one had escaped. But what chance was there that Oliver should be among them? Ungud had clutched at a straw. And then, mercilessly smothering that flicker of hope with douches of cold reason, say he had escaped by some incredible piece of luck, what was the likelihood of his ever reaching safety? At large in a hostile country, most probably injured or sick, his existence was threatened a hundred times an hour. No! To hope against hope when the odds were so unequal was sheerest folly.

Ungud was disturbed by our reception of his story.

‘It is good to hope!’ he insisted, with puzzlement on his seamed brown face.

Kate shook her head. ‘One man only, that you know, out of all the many men who were there, has lived. Let us leave it at that.’

‘Han! Han!’
he agreed, quite unconvinced. ‘But what of the others who were with him? Lieutenant Delafosse himself thinks that some of them must live.’

‘Perhaps! Perhaps! But there is treachery, Ungud, hunger, accident, animals, exhaustion. All these could have put an end to them since Lieutenant Delafosse last saw them. And, anyway, we do not know that the
Lat-sahib
was one of them. What is the good of thinking he might have been? What is the good of hoping with so little foundation? Better let us forget.’

‘Such are the words of foolish women,’ Ungud muttered bitterly as he got to his feet. ‘But I am a man and a soldier. The
Lat-sahib
was a man, and, though he was no soldier, I say this: if a man could survive by fighting, by cunning, by strength of arm or sureness of aim, then the
Lat-sahib, my sahib
, has survived. This I believe, and thus I shall hope.’

He salaamed and left us, dignity and disappointment equally present in the set of his thin naked shoulders.

‘That which does not make a

man worse than he was, also

does not make his life worse, nor

does it harm him whether from

without or from within.’

Marcus Aurelius

August became September and we entered the third month of the siege, though few besides those zealous ladies addicted to the keeping of diaries realized the fact. For most of us, the conduct of our lives had become no more than the continuation of an unbreakable habit. We had to live, so we ate what came our way, snatched sleep as we could and worked on, but without interest and often without active hope. We endured. Even the alarms inherent in our situation which had so terrified us in the first days had been repeated so often and in so monotonous a pattern of unlucky death or miraculous escape that we almost welcomed any event or disaster serious enough to be remembered with clarity. I know that not many of us were buoyed up by the promise of General Havelock’s relieving force, at least after the initial surprise, for nothing changed for the better. The rain continued, the heat never abated, our enemy’s guns thundered on. Each day brought its deaths, its quota of wounded to the hospital, its sicknesses to the women and children in damp cellars and dark rooms. Only the insects thrived and proliferated, and the sole cheerful sound in the entrenchment was the chorus of the toads.

The only discernible result of General Havelock’s communication was that our rations were cut by half. For myself, I was so sick of the endless repetition of
chapattis
, lentils and gun-bullock meat, I found little deprivation in the smaller amounts issued to us. But the men, always overworked, always tired, were also constantly famished, and one day as Jessie was piling up leathery
chapattis
on a tin plate for our supper, a private of the 32nd, seeing them from the verandah, rushed into the kitchen, slapped a silver rupee on the table, grabbed two of the
chapattis
and made off with them.

‘I ran after him wi’ the siller,’ Jessie said, recounting the incident. ‘I said he was welcome and more to a’ we had and no payment necessary, but he had stuffed his maw so fu’ he couldna speak and he just shook his head at me and slunk away like a thievin’ pi-dog in the bazaar, and wi’ the same desperate look in his eyes. Och, Miss Laura, what are we comin’ tae when a Christian man behaves like a starved beastie?’

‘It is my considered opinion,’ averred Mr Roberts, who was with us at the time, ‘that this measure of halving the allowance of food is unnecessary. Quite unnecessary.’

‘What?’ Kate and I exclaimed simultaneously, and Kate continued, ‘But Mr Roberts, for weeks past you have assured us that, if the pandies did not get us, starvation would. Now, when it seems that the authorities have some reason to concur with your opinion, you about-face and declare them wrong!’

‘Quite so, Mrs Barry, quite so. But I was speaking yesterday to Mr Simon Martin—the Deputy Commissioner, I am sure you know him—and he told me that Sir Henry Lawrence had ordered him to make provision for three thousand persons for six entire months. That was, of course, before the siege commenced.’

‘And Mr Martin did this?’

‘Certainly. Of course there was a great deal of confusion at the time, the military gentlemen insisting on purchasing and laying in their own provisions, despite the steps taken by the civil authorities, so no precise estimate of what is available is possible. But it is a great deal more than sufficient to see us to the 10th of September. A great deal more indeed.’

‘Well, I know for a fact,’ Kate went on after we had digested Mr Roberts’s information, ‘that there are still sufficient of those wretched Commissariat bullocks to last us all for weeks. Not that I wouldn’t sooner starve, mind, but I know they are there!’

‘Precisely, I too have heard, and indeed seen with my own eyes, that there is ample meat. If one may dignify it with that appellation!’

‘Well, I suppose someone knows what they are doing,’ Kate said grumpily.

‘You don’t look any too well tonight, Mr Roberts,’ I broke in. ‘Are you coming down with a cold? Almost everyone has one at the moment.’

He had been sniffing constantly since his arrival, well-ordered, gentlemanly sniffs to be sure, but sniffs all the same, and there was a pinched look to his red-tipped nose. His grey alpaca jacket was still neat and as clean as his own inexpert hands could make it, but it hung on him and the hands folded on his knee were thin and trembled visibly.

‘No, no, Miss Laura, no cold at all. I am quite well, remarkably so indeed when I think of what others are suffering. I could do with a pinch of snuff, of course; nothing would steady my nerves more quickly … but!’

‘I am sorry we cannot offer you that; but a drop of toast-water before you go perhaps?’

‘No, thank you, my dear. I must get back to my post.’

He made his adieux and turned to the door; then hesitated before turning back to us, saying, ‘By the bye, I have not seen Toddy-Bob for some days past. I trust nothing has happened to him?’

‘Oh, Toddy’s indestructible, thank heavens,’ I assured him. ‘I expect he’s been too busy, for even we have not seen as much of him as usual.’

‘Then would you be good enough to ask him to come to me, when he has a moment free? He does the odd small commission for me, as I am sure you know. A most helpful chap really, and there is a matter I believe he could attend to more satisfactorily than I could myself.’

‘Of course. We’ll send him around to you directly he appears.’

‘Thank you. Thank you very much.’ He lifted his correct grey hat, stained at the band but still in shape, and departed.

‘He is looking seedy, don’t you think, Kate? I do hope he is not sickening for something.’

‘He’s been sick for an unco’ number of years, if ye were to ask me!’ Jessie put in dourly before Kate could reply.

‘What do you mean, Jess? He has always looked well to me.’

‘’Tis the habit, d’ye ken? I’m thinkin’ he has it bad. There’s a look about them that has been takin’ it for some time and then can find nae more.’

‘What habit?’ I remained unenlightened.

‘Opium,’ Kate said quietly, while Jessie regarded her knitting in silence.

‘Opium? Mr Roberts?’

‘I have suspected it for some time,’ Kate said.

‘But he’s so self-contained and … and proper! Are you sure?’

‘I’d be very surprised if he were the only gentleman among us suffering more from the deprivation of opium than of food. Very surprised! But not all the money in the world can buy what no longer exists in this place.’

‘Aye! There’s none to be had by any, and that’s the truth. Not even a bittie wee pipeful left among the lot o’ us!’

‘How do you know, Jess?’

‘The wee man was tellin’ me. ’Tis he who did the findin’ of it for Mr Roberts—when it could be found. No doubt but that is why the poor gentleman has nae seen him!’

‘Of course, Toddy-Bob! I should have known. He has even left a couple of packets with me for Mr Roberts when he couldn’t wait to see him himself. I thought they were tobacco or snuff.’

‘Well, ’tis the Lord’s hand nae doubt. If yon gentleman can weather these next few weeks, he’ll be free o’ the hankerin’. An’ that will be a blessin’. ’Tis the expense, ye ken, the sair expense!’

As silence fell between us, my mind went back many weeks to my bedroom in Hassanganj and to Oliver standing with the baby in his arms and saying, ‘There’s many a fine English gentleman who has been reared on the infernal poppy!’ But I was still capable of surprise.

Ungud’s account of Lieutenant Delafosse’s escape from Cawnpore, unspecific as it was, had disturbed me, despite my resolution not to indulge an idle hope. When he left us, he had sought out Toddy-Bob and Ishmial who must have proved a more sympathetic audience than we three women, for on the following evening Toddy walked in on us, looking more cheerful and less debauched than he had for several weeks past, and I realized that he, at least, had clutched at Ungud’s straw. There was no avoiding the subject however much I wished to, and when he had beaten the likelihood of Oliver’s escape back and forth between us for some time, I could have screamed, ‘Stop, oh, stop! I will not be unreasonable; I want no belief in the impossible; I cannot leave myself open to further anguish!’ But I restrained myself, for it was so obvious that Toddy-Bob needed to hope as much as I feared to. I listened to his reasons but determined to dismiss them from my mind.

Which, of course, was impossible.

At night now, I lay thinking not of the desperate carnage at the river, nor of the few happy hours I had spent in Oliver Erskine’s company, but imagining his reappearance in my life. When I scolded myself for this foolishness an insistent voice at the back of my mind would repeat, ‘But it is possible. Only just possible. But surely possible?’ As it is seldom that cold reason is the victor in a conflict between head and heart, and with all my heart I wanted Oliver alive, sooner or later I would catch myself protesting, ‘Of course it’s possible! More—it’s even probable. Remember what Oliver was like.’