Zemindar (94 page)

‘Mr Erskine, no less? Oliver Erskine of Hassanganj? How extraordinary!’ Mrs Bonner commented, quite forgetting a previous conversation in which his name and character had been mentioned.

I had not seen Mr Roberts in a fortnight, and such was the change in his appearance that for a moment I almost forgot my invalid. He had been getting thinner all through the siege, like the rest of us. Even Mrs Bonner’s many chins now hung above her bosom flaccid as the sails of a becalmed ship. But Mr Roberts was more than thin; he had shrunk, shrivelled up, and his usually ruddy complexion was faded and blotched. His hands trembled constantly and he sniffed, twitched and blinked his red-rimmed eyes without ceasing. He remained, however, as polite and concerned as always.

‘Oh, thank God, Miss Laura! Indeed it is good to hear one piece of truly splendid news in this sad time, and there is no one of whom I would sooner hear it than Erskine. As remarkable a thing as I have yet heard. To have survived Wheeler’s entrenchment and the massacre at the river. But, then, he is a remarkable man, Miss Laura, a remarkable man, as I am sure you have discovered. A little eccentric, perhaps, and somewhat maligned by those unacquainted with him, but a remarkable man.’

‘I remember you saying something of the same sort, but perhaps a little less complimentary, on the ship one day. Do you remember?’

‘Remember? The ship? What ship was that?’

‘Why, Mr Roberts! The
Firefly
—the ship that brought us all out to India.’

‘Of course! Forgive me. My memory is not what it was, you know, and I seem to find it harder to concentrate these days. The privations, I suppose. I’m not a young man, after all. And I said … you say I mentioned Mr Erskine to you? On the ship?’

‘Yes. We were very curious about him. None of us knew much about him or how he lived and you gave us a little lecture about the
zemindar’s
life. I confess that at the time I only half believed you, but then, later, you rather hinted to me that Mr Erskine was a … a rogue, I think was the term.’

‘I said Mr Erskine was a rogue? Surely not, Miss Laura?’

‘Well, I believe the word was mine, but you did agree to the definition.’

‘How strange. Of course there were many people in Calcutta to malign a man whom I had, at that time, never met. But as you know, I have had much reason since to form the most favourable opinion of his capacities and his character. Much reason!’

I had intended only to tease my old friend, to cheer him up and make him laugh at the memory of my ignorance and curiosity, but had only succeeded in upsetting him. He blinked, twitched his head and fingered his lips in anxiety.

‘Well, I also have had occasion to change my opinion of him,’ I said to soothe him. ‘I made many mistakes in reading his character and now I am so thankful that I have the opportunity of admitting those mistakes.’

He appeared not to have heard me, but after a moment he shook his head and said in a bleak way, ‘Yes, women do find him attractive, I believe. Attractive. It would be difficult for you to escape that attraction, living in Hassanganj as you did, and almost alone. Do not allow yourself to get too attached, dear Laura, to anything or anyone. Sooner or later one loses all, you know. Everything. Do not invest too much of yourself in another. It must end in pain. Always pain.’

‘Oh, come now, Mr Roberts! These are gloomy words. Surely this is a time for rejoicing and not mournful bodings of ill?’

‘Of course, you are right. And yet … and yet I hope you will remember what I said. It is a mistake to lose oneself, in love or business … or anything else. A grave mistake!’

Before I could reply, he rose, took my hand and pressed it in his own dry and scaly one and walked unsteadily into the night.

‘Ah, poor man, poor man!’ sighed Kate, who had been sitting with us. ‘He’s in a bad way. And no way for anyone to help him.’

‘Is it the opium, Kate? He has aged ten years.’

‘The want of the stuff. Maybe if he can hang on another few weeks, he’ll be as good as new again, but …’ She shook her head sadly.

On the third morning after his coming, Oliver opened eyes that were for the first time bright with interest and not fever. His forehead was cool and he asked for food, so we propped him up and gave him a mush of rice and lentils that Kate said would be more strengthening than the arrowroot. He ate hungrily, insisted on feeding himself with his left hand, and while he ate his eyes wandered around the room and from face to face. I suppose he was trying to get his bearings.

‘Thank you,’ he said as he finished, pushing away the tin plate with an impatient gesture I remembered well. ‘I’m glad to see you have some food here. We had understood that you were starving.’

‘We’ve managed,’ I assured him, settling him more comfortably while Kate removed the plate and mug, and Jessie, having clucked her approval of his appetite, took the baby out for an airing.

‘Out!’ he gestured peremptorily to Toddy and Ishmial who were inclined to linger. As they left the room, he said, ‘Alive, well, even adequately fed!’ He shook his head unbelievingly, then placed my hand against his lips and kissed it. When he looked at me again, there were tears in his eyes but he only said, ‘Thank God!’ He turned his head away from me so that I would not see the tears and, still holding my hand, murmured, ‘So much I have to know. So much I don’t know. Tell me.’

‘Not now. When you are stronger. There’ll be all the time in the world later. Try and sleep now. It will do you good.’

‘Don’t leave me, will you? Sleep … is not always very pleasant just now. Let me wake to find you here.’ I told him there was nothing I would sooner do than remain with him, and in a few moments he fell asleep again, still holding my hand in his.

There was a recurrence of fever that night but by morning he was again cool and sleeping peacefully. That day he seemed stronger, slept less and in his waking moments talked and asked questions to which he now demanded answers. He ate a respectable meal in the evening and then asked to be propped up in a sitting position for a while.

‘For a very short while,’ I assented officiously as I made him comfortable. ‘You must not try your strength.’

‘But that is just what I intend to do,’ he retorted. ‘Feel much stronger, pain’s less and tomorrow begins to look like something more than only a possibility. I believe I’m on the mend.’ He stretched his gaunt form under the blanket, flexed the muscles of his sound arm and arched his neck to relieve the tension in his shoulders.

‘Laura, come here.’ He patted the bed and I went and sat down beside him, realizing that for the first time our eyes were on a level. He looked large and bony and rather threatening, bulked up in the bed against the pillow we had devised of folded cloaks.

A heavy storm of rain resounded on the flat roof of the Gaol and splashed in spray on the stone of the verandah, deadening the occasional far-away gun. The room was dank in the damp heat, quiet and dark. A saucer-dip on a box beside the bed threw shadows on the whitewashed wall but gave little light. Oliver’s long hand groped for the dip, then held it up close to my face. His gaze moved over my features, thin now and in their thinness plainer, and over my cropped untidy hair. Carefully he replaced the lamp, then stretched out his hand again and made it follow the route his eyes had taken a moment before, touching gently my brow, eyes and cheeks, my chin and hair, and at last lingering for a moment on my lips.

‘I cannot believe it yet,’ he said at last.

‘That you are here?’

‘And you with me.’

‘I know. I had given up hope.’

‘Of the relief?’

‘No—of you!’

A pause. ‘Glad?’

‘Yes.’

‘Happy?’

‘Very.’

‘Why?’

‘You know why.’

‘I was right, then?’

‘So I discovered.’

‘When? How?’

‘Little by little. Now and then. Here and there.’

‘Elucidate!’

‘You are talking too much. We will go into it later, when you are stronger.’

‘Now, at once! Or I’ll get up and walk out!’

‘You couldn’t reach the door.’

For answer he swung his legs out of the bed and made as though he would leave it.

‘Very well, very well,’ I agreed in real anxiety, for the sudden movement had made him sway in an attack of faintness as he rose. I pushed him back against his pillow, but gently, and replaced the blanket.

‘Be quiet and stay still and I’ll tell you …’

He smiled and took my hand. ‘Go on, now tell me when you realized you loved me, for I always felt you must—eventually.’

‘It was during the first big assault against us. In July. I thought I would be killed before the day was out, and though I was frightened I knew suddenly that I was more frightened of not seeing you again than of dying. An awful feeling of loss, of lost opportunities. Nothing rational about it, of course, but they tell me there is little rational about love at the best of times. But … losing you was worse than death.’

‘I know, I know. I had that, too, and for such a long time.’ As though the memory of that time recalled too clearly its pain, he dropped my hand and placed his own over his closed eyes. ‘Go on,’ he prompted in a muffled voice.

‘But … but even before that, on the night that Emily died …’

‘Emily’s dead?’

‘Yes, she …’

‘Tell me later, go on …’

‘Everyone was frightened and ill and hopeless, and I was too. I didn’t know what was going to happen to us, how we would manage, and then I thought of you and I knew I had to stay alive, somehow, to … to tell you … well, all sorts of things. That I had been wrong about you and you had been right about me and …’

‘Not what I want to hear!’

‘And …’

‘Say it!’

‘Why can’t you say it first?’

‘I’ve said it. Don’t you remember? Outside the hut that hot morning when we were travelling here? Your turn. Say it, Laura!’

‘And—that I thought I could love you.’

‘Not enough. Admit it.’

My hand was again captured and I found his amber eyes looking straight into mine. I was trembling despite the bantering tone in which this exchange had been conducted. He tightened his grasp on my fingers and almost pleaded: ‘Admit it! Once, please?’

‘I love you.’

It was not so hard an admission to make after all; so I rushed on. ‘I love you. I believe I must always have loved you and I am sure now that I always will.’

He leaned back and put my hand to his lips, eyes closed. Then, holding my hand against his bearded cheek, he said, ‘Are you quite sure it is love? Could it not be pity? Finding me at last in this pathetic and pain-racked condition might have proved too much for your female sensibilities and have nothing to do with your heart.’

‘Pity? For you? Nonsense!’ I protested, in an effort to respond to his tone, though, gazing at his face with its closed eyes, marked with deep lines of suffering, the mouth set in a new habit of silent endurance, a face very different to the one I remembered, I was indeed very near to pity for him. Not only because of his physical pain, either, nor the tormenting memories for which a hand over his eyes was the best amelioration. There was something else now written on those familiar features that wrung my heart, a suggestion of bewildered guardedness, uncertainty, in short a lack of assurance most unlike the entrenched self-confidence that I had once considered so arrogant. He was vulnerable and knew himself to be so, and guessing this I realized that banter was no longer a defence but a hesitant invitation to pursue the conversation in greater depth.

‘I would not want to pity you,’ I said, seriously. ‘And you would not want me to. But cannot you accept my compassion—along with all the rest that I feel for you? It comes of an understanding that would perhaps surprise you. All those months of fencing with you in Hassanganj, while they delayed the acknowledgement of my love to myself, did help me to decipher your character, and some, at least, of your necessities. Were it not so, I could not read your need of me so plainly now. Oliver, I can love you just as well in your weakness and what you feel is your inadequacy, as I will when you are well and strong again. Let me accept you as you are. Oh, my darling, open yourself to me. I so much wish to be honest with you—in all my moods and tribulations.’

I felt tears against the hand he held to his face, but the eyes remained closed, and quiet filled the room.

‘It has come true,’ he whispered at last, shaking his head in disbelief, and smiling slightly.

‘Oh, Laura! It is so hard to believe, after … that … that I should live to hear you speak as I so often wanted you to. With love. There were times in the entrenchment when I believe I would have died without protest had I had the memory of a few words of … of intimacy with you, to make me feel I had gained something in living. My memories, and I lived by them, were sweet—but there had been nothing between us like … this.’

His eyes flicked open, bright with tears.

‘I was right about you. From the beginning. I knew you could love me as I wanted to be loved, in parity and sharing—and passion. Oh, Laura, you have given me such a sense of … of freedom. I cannot express it. Such a delight.’

He shook his head again and brushed away the tears from his eyes with my hand, on which his grip had tightened as he spoke.

‘Laura! No more “fencing” now?’

He held my eyes with his. I shook my head, silently, seeing in them again the naked strength of emotion that had unsettled me so deeply outside the herder’s hut on our journey to Lucknow. But now I did not glance away to escape, nor attempt to quiet my own inner tumult.

‘There is no need, my heart,’ I said softly, as I leaned forward and placed my lips against his, and his hand loosed mine, and his arm encircled me.

The following days passed with the swiftness and sweetness of a summer wind as I realized that Oliver was on the mend and truly with me. He grew stronger and slept less almost by the hour, and with the return of strength there came the return of curiosity, impatience and all his normal humours, good and bad. Soon the confinement and inactivity began to irk him and I had to use all my ingenuity and powers of persuasion to try to keep him quiet. I spent much time telling him of all that had happened to us since he bade us farewell at the
serai
on the outskirts of Lucknow: of the house of Wajid Khan; of our flight and all we had endured since entering the entrenchment. Of his own experiences he said nothing, and I would not question him until he felt himself able to talk of them without too much distress.