Zemindar (88 page)

But always, at this point, that other small voice—of reason—would point out icily, ‘But what right have you to hope for the life of one particular man amongst so many?’ And only when the shadow-fight of right reason with rebellious hope had exhausted me would I sink into a restless sleep.

Then, once again, our individual struggles were merged and forgotten in a common effort, as through a long day we withstood the attack Ungud had foretold, the fourth major assault the pandies had launched against us.

Once more our men managed to repel the attackers, but when it was all over, for the first time the garrison showed no exhilaration, no triumph. I believe we all felt that day that nothing had been achieved by our efforts but an added margin of fatigue, suffering and near despair, and when Charles visited us at nightfall he told us how through all that long day of shattering noise our men had fought in almost total silence. The silence of exhaustion.

One cheering fact emerged, however. The native troops of the garrison, including the Sikhs on whom so many doubts were focused, had fought with dedicated ferocity. There was nothing else to cheer us, and that one reassuring fact was not sufficient to lift the spirits for long, for all of us suffered to some extent from depression and lowness of heart. The weather changed too, becoming suddenly much cooler, so that the shelterless men at the batteries were now shivering from cold as only a few days before they had shivered from ague. All the tents and rolls of canvas had long since been built into the stockade.

Charles was again wounded in the fourth assault, but again not seriously. A shell splinter cut through the calf of his left leg but, though no bones were broken and he insisted on hobbling about his normal duties, the wound would not heal. In the hospital every man was showing similar symptoms: small wounds, sometimes mere abrasions, remained open, often growing larger and festering despite prompt attention. ‘It’s the diet,’ Dr Partridge said when I questioned him. ‘We are suffering from scurvy, as sailors do at sea when they can get no fresh fruit or vegetables. There’s nothing any of us can do about it. Blood’s bad; lacks something that contributes to the healing process. Lemons help, but what hope have we of lemons here?’ He had turned away shaking his head wearily at the thought of the mountain of insuperable problems he was expected to deal with.

That evening when we were assembled for supper, I told my household what the doctor had said.

‘’Course!’ Toddy-Bob jeered. ‘Everyone knows that; that’s why the blackies go over the wall every night—to get theirselves a handful of
sag
, to add to their lentils. They’re in better fettle that we are by a long shot too.’

‘They get over the wall?’ exclaimed Kate, horrified.

‘Sure, ma’am—reg’lar. They always likes this green stuff,
sag
, in their curries and that, you see, and now they just adds it to their
dhal
, their lentils. They say it does ’em good. I’ll get you some if you want.’

‘Oh, no, Tod. You mustn’t,’ I protested hurriedly.

‘’Old ’ard, miss. Toddy-Bob ’ops over that wall for nothin’ nor no one, so don’t worry your ’ead on that one. Not as there’s much ’oppin’ to do, mind. There’s places in this bloody wall of ours where you can just open a door or slip through a ’ole into the long grass and no one any the wiser. It don’t need no ’eroics, or there wouldn’t ’ave been so many desertions. Them Christian drummers, you remember ’em, miss? They just pushed open a door and walked out, like.
And
left the door open. The stuff’s bin comin’ in the same way too, see?’

‘Stuff?’

‘Yes, miss. Messages. To the blackies from their friends outside. And tobacco. Rum for a while too. And …’ He stopped.

‘And opium?’ Kate asked shrewdly.

‘Well yes, ma’am. That too.’ Toddy blinked his button eyes.

‘Is that how you have been managing to supply Mr Roberts?’ Kate continued sternly.

‘He asked me, ma’am! An’ I never took a penny for it, seein’ the cruel packet he ’ad to pay the
sowar
I got it from in the first place. Never made a penny off of ’im, I didn’t. Didn’t seem ’ardly right to me. I ain’t never touched the stuff myself. Seen what it does to a man. But the old gentleman, well ’e really needed it, like—see? So I just obliges ’im. When I could, that is.’

‘And you can oblige him no longer?’

‘No, ma’am. First, because the Sikh
sowar
who sold it to me ’as took ’is passage to a better world. Then, because there’s no more comin’ in. The pandies thought more of us would desert to get it, see—and we might of—but then word gets round they kill deserters anyways, like them chickaboo drummers, so, well, that’s it. None of the stuff around any more. Not for commercial purposes anyway.’

This intelligence of Toddy’s brought home to me how little we women knew of what was going on around us. My horizon had been somewhat extended since Kate and I had started visiting the hospital, but even so I had not caught a glimpse of the world outside the wall since the end of June, and even the world within the wall came to us largely by hearsay. With a few exceptions even the men who led us were to me, at least, only names. Sir Henry Lawrence I had glimpsed but twice on our arrival; his successor, Major Banks, killed soon after his appointment, I never to my knowledge set eyes upon. Mr Gubbins I recognized, as I did Brigadier ‘Bluff Jack’ Inglis who was now in command of the entrenchment. But there were a score of other names I heard and used myself day after day whose owners were as remote as the prominent characters mentioned in a newspaper. As in a newspaper, also, it was the heroes and the villains who were most frequently mentioned and whose death or injury caused most comment. So, when one of our great heroes, Captain Fulton, met his end, Mrs Bonner braved a heavy rainstorm late at night to run down the verandah and tell us of the fact, and though I had probably never even seen the gentleman, my heart sank a little on hearing of his death. Captain Fulton, a young, high-spirited Engineer, had controlled and directed the mining operations within the entire entrenchment. Cheerful, energetic and unconventional, it was inevitable that his personality should form the kernel of one of those myths fastened upon as inspiration by people in peril.

‘He had dined with Mr Gubbins,’ Mrs. Bonner confided tearfully. ‘Afterwards he went out into the garden with his field-glass to try and make out what the pandies were doing across the way—and was killed. All in a second, Miss Hewitt. The back of his head was taken off by a nine-pound shot, but Major Bonner says that when they laid him out on a bed no one could have told what killed him. So awful, Miss Hewitt, his face was quite unmarked. But just … just a mask!’

Kate crossed herself. ‘Glory be, but that’s a sore loss that we’ll all be feeling. A sore loss.’

‘Second only to that of Sir Henry himself,’ Mrs Bonner concurred, for once in harmony with Kate.

My birthday falls on the 16th of September, so I remember well the date when Ungud came to tell us he was going ‘out’ for the third and last time.

Toddy-Bob had donated a bottle of brandy for our celebration. No one asked where it had come from, and even the thought of the men in the hospital failed to rouse my conscience as I allowed the warmth of the spirit to slide down my throat.

Charles was with us, but Pearl, exhausted by the attention given to her new accomplishment of clapping hands, had been put to bed. Ishmial sat on the verandah, a silent benevolent spectator to our festivity. As a Muslim he could not be tempted to the brandy, but the equally God-fearing Jessie agreed to a tot and became more loquacious and Scottish with every sip. I had hoped that Mr Roberts could be with us but his visits of late had been less frequent and I had had no opportunity to invite him to the ‘party’. Wallace Avery we had seen only three or four times since Emily’s death, and from all accounts it was probably as well he was not with us.

We were sitting in comfortable silence with the doors open, watching night close over the entrenchment, when Ungud, naked but for his loincloth and carrying a staff in his hand, appeared on the front verandah. He salaamed politely, but refused to sit down. He was still hurt at our reception of his story of the escape of Lieutenant Delafosse.

‘I cannot stay,’ he said gruffly. ‘I go out again—now!’ He looked directly at me as he spoke and there was an aggrieved note in his voice. ‘I do not go out because I wish to know what has happened to Havelock
Sahib
or the
bilaiti paltan
, though that indeed must be known and that is what
they
think. I go out to find the
Lat-sahib
—or to find news of him. Inglis
Sahib
has paid me much; enough to keep a man such as I am, with all my relatives, for my life. Now he says he will pay me again, five hundred English pounds, if I come back with news of Havelock
Sahib
for him. I do not need the money,
Mem
. I do not want the money,
Mem
. But if this is the only way I can find the
Lat-sahib
, then I will take it. But I go not for the money but for the
Lat-sahib
. I will come back with the information the
Sahib-log
need. But first I will find out the truth about
my Sahib
. And if I find the truth this time, then I will go out no more. Whatever the truth may be.’

He paused and surveyed us all with something between sorrow and disdain. He was a skinny little man, and his brown skin had taken on the grey tinge of age, though he was probably younger than he looked. As he stood in the doorway, with the light of the dip playing on his bent shoulders and thin shanks, we were aware of an immense strength of purpose, a great devotion and an admirable dignity in his air and bearing. I felt humbled by his belief in himself and in his master and ashamed that I was incapable of the like.

‘If I do not return,’ he continued, speaking slowly so that I should have no difficulty in understanding. ‘If I do not return, and the
Lat-sahib
lives, then tell him that Ungud died in his service—and in that of the
Raj
. That is all,
Mem. Salaam
!’ He lifted his staff in salute and padded away into the hostile night.

‘Poor devil!’ said Charles pityingly.

‘’E’ll be all right, sir,’ put in Toddy sharply. ‘And if anyone can find out anything about the Guv’nor, it’s Ungud. Good luck to ’im, that’s all I can say!’

‘And Amen to a’ that,’ agreed Jessie tranquilly.

For some reason Ungud’s visitation, like the abrupt apparition of an angry hurried ghost, cast a gloom over our party, and before long we corked up the precious bottle of brandy and bade our guests goodnight. The brandy put me to sleep quickly, but several times I woke to find Kate also awake. At last she voiced the thought that was disturbing our rest.

‘I’m wondering and wondering if he’ll manage to get through the city.’

‘Perhaps he’s out already,’ I whispered.

‘Not out of the city, so vast and sprawling as it is.’

‘He’s done it before, Kate.’

‘Surely, but God help the poor creature just the same. I believe he meant it when he said the money meant nothing to him.’

‘He’d have little to spend it on, anyway. But there’s no doubt he is truly anxious to find … to find news of Oliver. He and his family for generations were born at Hassanganj. Oliver means something to him.’

‘Aye, he was always a man that inspired devotion was Oliver. When it wasn’t loathing, that is. Just like his grandfather before him. There were no half-measures about the Erskine men.’ She sighed and again tried to sleep.

I had no doubt that Ungud would perform his errand for the
Sahib-log
with success. He would contrive to make his way through Lucknow to where General Havelock was waiting to push through to our rescue, ascertain the reasons for the General’s delay, and return with his intelligence to Brigadier Inglis.

But how could he possibly hope to discover Oliver’s fate?

I knew something now of the vast populations that throng any Indian city, populations that eddy and surge like the waves of the sea but with less explanation. They come and go, these anonymous multitudes, from the seething bazaars and tenements to homes in scattered hamlets, always restless, always on the move, their peregrinations appearing to Western minds as mysterious as they are frequent, drifting for no discernible reason from city to village or from one tumbled dwelling to another precisely like it. Now, to confound confusion, armies marched and countermarched over the tired plains of ancient India, erasing each other’s paths as they went, fighting, marauding, plundering, laying waste the anguished husbandry of the patient men who tilled the battlefields and ploughed the new-made graves. Where, in such a maelstrom of movement, among so many conflicting streams and passing currents, could Ungud hope to discover the trail that Oliver might have left behind him? The notion was absurd.

I watched anxiously for Ungud’s return, nevertheless.

Six days passed without bringing news of him, but then, on the 23rd of September, Charles told us that Ungud had returned the previous night with news that General Havelock would ‘without doubt’ be in Lucknow within a fortnight. I, personally, received the news with small enthusiasm. There had been so many other times when the relief was heralded as being ‘no more than a week’, or ‘within five or six days’, or ‘certainly no more than a fortnight’ away, that now my scepticism was not to be overcome even by the delight of the men in the hospital.

‘Only think on it, miss!’ one of the wounded said to me that afternoon. ‘A couple o’ weeks and this’ll be be’ind us. Clean air, miss, and real bread wi’ butter inches thick on it, meat as don’t crawl off’n your plate by its tod, and all the rum a man can drink!’

His method of expression was perhaps primitive, but the sentiment behind it was universal. Everybody in the entrenchment had drawn up a favourite menu with which he hoped to celebrate deliverance, and even the longed-for letters from ‘Home’ took second place to food in one’s mythology of liberation.