Refreshed by this glimpse of courage personified Fleury and the Doctor continued up the marble staircase to the galleries. Here a number of people were comfortably seated in alcoves, separated from each other by ferns and red plush screens, in a good position to survey the floor below. There was a good deal of coming and going between these alcoves as social calls were paid and it was here that one might discuss the hard facts of marriage while the young people took care of the sentimental aspects downstairs. Mrs Dunstaple had found herself a sofa beneath a punkah and was talking to another lady who also had a nubile daughter, though rather more plain than Louise. At the sight of Fleury approaching with her husband Mrs Dunstaple was unable to stifle a groan of pleasure for she had just been boasting to her companion of the attentions which Fleury was paying to Louise and had had the disagreeable impression of not being altogether believed.
Fleury bowed as he was introduced and then sat down, dazed by the heat. The red plush screens surrounding him gave him the feeling that he was sitting in a furnace. He took out a handkerchief and mopped his oily brow. On the floor below, the dancers were coming to the end of a waltz and soon it would be time for the galloppe. Presently Louise appeared, escorted by Lieutenants Cutter and Stapleton who both stared insolently at Fleury and evidently found themselves unequal to the task of recognizing him.
Fleury gazed in admiration at Louise; he understood she had been a bridesmaid at the wedding of a childhood friend earlier in the evening. The two girls had grown up together and now, after they had told each other so many times: “Oh no, you’ll be first!”, the other girl had been first, because Louise was taking such a long time making up her mind.
Fleury could see that Louise had been moved by this experience of being her friend’s bridesmaid; her face had become vulnerable, as if she were close to laughter or tears. He found this vulnerability strangely disarming.
And now that Louise had been keyed up in this way, small wonder if for a few hours at least, she should look at every young man she met, even Fleury, and see him momentarily as her future husband. Mrs Dunstaple looked at her daughter and then looked at Fleury, who was covertly grinding his teeth and scratching his knuckles, which had just been bitten by a mosquito. How quickly life goes by! She sighed. The rather plain daughter of her companion was suffering from “prickly heat”, she was being informed. What a shame! She bent a sympathetic ear.
It was time for the galloppe. As they took up their positions on the floor Louise raised her eyes and gazed at Fleury in an enquiring sort of way. But Fleury was wool-gathering, he was thinking complacently that in London one would not still have seen gentlemen wearing brown evening dress coats as one did here, and he was thinking of civilization, of how it must be something more than the fashions and customs of one country imported into another, of how it must be a superior view of mankind, and of how he was suffocated in his own black evening dress coat, and of what a strong smell of sweat there was down here on the floor, and of whether he could possibly survive the coming dance. Then, at last, the orchestra struck up with a lively air and set the dancers’ feet in motion, among them Louise’s white satin shoes and Fleury’s patent leather boots, charging and wheeling rhythmically as if all this were taking place not in India but in some temperate land far away.
3
Towards the end of April the dak gharry which carried the English mail inland every fortnight made its laborious way as usual across the vast plain towards Krishnapur. It dragged behind it a curtain of dust which climbed to an immense height and hung in the air for several miles back like a rain cloud. As well as the mail the gharry also contained Miriam, Fleury, Lieutenant Harry Dunstaple, and a spaniel called Chloë, who had spent a good deal of the journey with her head out of the window watching with amazement the dust that billowed from beneath the wheels.
“What I should like to know, Harry, is whether it’s a Moslem or a Hindu cemetery?”
“The Hindus don’t bury their dead so it must be Mohammedan.”
“Of course it must, what a fool I am!” Fleury glanced at Harry for the signs of derision that newcomers to India, insultingly termed “griffins”, had to expect from old hands. But Harry’s pleasant face registered only polite lack of interest in the burial habits of the natives.
Fleury and Miriam had come across Harry at the last dak bungalow; he had very decently ridden out to greet them, in spite of the fact that his left arm was in a sling; he had sprained his wrist pig-sticking. Not content with riding out he had sent his horse back with the sais and had joined the travellers in the discomfort of the gharry, a carriage which bore a close resemblance to an oblong wooden box on four wheels without springs; they had now spent almost two days in this conveyance and their soft bodies cried out for comfort. Miriam had spent most of the journey with her nose buried in a handkerchief and her eyes leaking muddy tears, not because she had suffered a renewal of grief for Captain Lang but because of the stifling dust which irritated her eyeballs. As for Fleury, his excitement at the prospect of seeing Louise again was muted by misgivings as to what sort of place Krishnapur might turn out to be. This arid plain they were crossing was scarcely promising. Very likely there would be discomfort and snakes. In such circumstances he feared that he would not shine.
Harry had greeted him with friendliness mixed with caution and they had spent a little time searching hopefully, but so far in vain, for an interest in common. The Joint Magistrate had been taken ill and had gone to the hills for a cure from which it was feared he would not return, Harry had explained, so it had been arranged that they should take over his bungalow while he was away.
Chloë, overcome by the heat, had thrown herself panting on to Fleury’s lap and had fallen asleep there. He tried to shove her away, but a dog that does not want to be moved can make herself very heavy indeed, and so he was obliged to let her stay. Fleury did not himself particularly care for dogs, but he knew that young ladies did, as a rule. He had bought Chloë, whose golden tresses had reminded him of Louise, from a young officer who had ruined himself at the race-course. At the time he had thought of Chloë as a subtle gift; the golden tresses had blended in his mind with the idea of canine fidelity and devotion. He would use Chloë as a first salvo aimed at Louise’s affections. But in the meantime he found her only a nuisance.
As they approached Krishnapur they saw a few travellers on the road, including some sepoys who looked very fine in their red coats and black trousers. As they passed, the sepoys saluted the pallor of the faces they glimpsed in the dim interior of the carriage (not to mention Chloë’s gilt curls). Only Harry noticed with a frown that one or two of them had saluted with their left hands; if he had been alone he would have stopped and rebuked them for such a deliberate lack of respect; as it was he had to pretend not to have noticed. They crept ponderously past a camel harnessed to a cart and Fleury stared dubiously at the belt around the great balloon of its stomach . . - all these strange sights made him feel melancholy again, a lone wanderer on the face of the earth. Old men sat on their heels against the wall of a nabob’s house and beside them sat a dusty lion chained to the wall. Next they passed a mosque, empty except for lamps of coloured glass, and rattled over an iron bridge. A family of yellow-green monkeys stared up at him with hostility, their eyes like lumps of polished jade.
And then they had plunged into the bazaar, crowded with people dressed in white muslin. Where could they all possibly live? An incongruous picture came into Fleury’s mind of a hundred and fifty people squatting on the floor of his aunt’s drawing-room in Torquay. The gharry lurched suddenly and turned into some gates. They had arrived. His heart sank.
They had not arrived. Harry had climbed down and was arguing with a man who had been scrambling along beside the carriage shouting and had caused them to turn into these gates which, it turned out, belonged to the dak bungalow. Harry seemed quite angry; this was not at all where he wanted to stop. A laborious parley was taking place, Harry’s grasp of the language being limited to a few si
mple commands, domestic and military. He was becoming exasperated and beginning to shout; soldiers are notorious for reacting badly when their will is opposed. Yet though the man flinched slightly at every fresh outburst, he stood his ground. They might have continued like this for some time, Harry shouting, the native flinching, but for the appearance of another man, elderly and very fat, who hurried up from the direction of the bungalow. When he opened his mouth to speak, Fleury saw that it was stained an astonishing orange-red from the chewing of betel. Hypnotized he stared into this glowing cavern from which English was emerging, though not of a sort he was able to understand. This man was the khansamah from the dak bungalow, Harry interpreted for Fleury’s benefit, and what he wanted to say was … wait!
A look of alarm appeared on Harry’s face and without waiting to hear any more he sprinted towards the bungalow, up the steps, and vanished inside. Fleury would have followed had not Chloë chosen this moment to wrench herself from his grip and bolt into the enticing green jungle of the compound. Ignoring his shouts she careered away at high speed with her nose to the ground. He pursued her despairingly and after a long search found her experimentally licking the brown stomach of a baby she had come across playing in the mud by the servants’ huts some distance away. He dragged her back, slapping and scolding. Harry had returned.
“What was all that about?”
“I thought you heard. The khansamah said a woman was trying to kill herself.” Harry paused, looking shaken. “She appears to be … well, I suppose one would say ‘drunk’, not to put too fine a point on it.”
“A Hindu?” ventured Fleury with medium confidence. He had remembered that Mohammedans do not drink.
“Well, that’s the whole thing. She appears to be English, I’m afraid. That is, I mean to say, she definitely is English. I’d heard something about her before, actually. It seems …” Harry cleared his throat artificially. His already pink cheeks grew pinker and he threw an embarrassed glance in the direction of Miriam. “It seems some officer took away her virtue. He left her then, of course, or he’d have got into trouble with his colonel. She’s done this before, you know. I mean, tried to kill herself. One really doesn’t know quite what to do.”
The sun was setting by the time Fleury and Miriam found their way to the Joint Magistrate’s bungalow. It turned out to be a yellow-plastered building surrounded by a verandah and thatched for coolness. Bearers appeared out of the twilight to wrestle with their boxes while they peered inside. Two bedrooms, each with a bathroom attached, and two other rooms, divided from each other by pieces of red cotton cloth instead of doors. Saying she was tired, Miriam swiftly vanished into the emptiest bedroom with her boxes, leaving Fleury to his own devices. Fleury felt resentful towards her for so suddenly deserting him in this unfamiliar place; she had become like this since the death of her husband.
Melancholy overwhelmed him at the thought of the lonely evening ahead. Although the Joint Magistrate had gone away to die in the hills he had not seen fit to take his belongings with him. One of the rooms had been used as an office; paper was heaped everywhere. Fleury stirred a pile of documents with the toe of his boot and it toppled over gently on to the floor, exhaling dust; the light was just bright enough for him to see that it was a collection of salt-reports tied in bundles with the frail, faded red tape of India’s official business. There were also blue-books, codes, and countless letters, some filed, some heaped at random. It seemed inevitable that no one would ever return from the hills to sort out this mass of official paper. From the wall the head of a very small tiger stared at him with dislike; at least, he supposed it must be a tiger, though it looked more like an ordinary household cat.
By now most of the baggage had been moved into his bedroom and was being unpacked under the eye of the khansamah, who in turn was being supervised by Harry, who had helpfully reappeared, bringing with him an invitation to supper at the Residency. Gradually the contents of his boxes were emptied out: books and clothes, Havanas, Brown Windsor soap, jams and conserves in miraculously unbroken jars, a cask of brandy, seidlitz powders, candles, a tin footbath, bound volumes of Bell’s Life, more candles, boots in trees, and an ingenious piece of furniture designed to serve, in dire domestic situations which Fleury hoped never to experience, as both wash-stand and writing table. After a rapid discussion in Hindustani the books were placed on top of this table and its legs were stood in earthenware saucers filled with water. It was to protect them against ants, Harry explained. Fleury nodded calmly but a terrible thought occurred to him: what if snakes came to drink from these saucers while he was asleep in bed? Something warned him, however, not to mention this fear to Harry. Harry would not understand. Then, peering around in the gathering darkness, Fleury noticed that not only the legs of the table but also of the cupboards and even of the bed itself were standing in saucers brimming with water.
By the time Fleury reached the Residency it was much too dark for him to see the apoplectic snap-dragons that guarded the beds beside the drive, but he could smell the heavy scent of the roses … the smell disturbed him; like the smell of incense it was more powerful than an Englishman is accustomed to. At that moment, tired and dispirited, he would have given a great deal to smell the fresh breeze off the Sussex downs. He said as much to Harry Dunstaple.
“Yes, I see what you mean,” agreed Harry cautiously.
“I say, what’s all this?”
Two looming banks of earth had rolled out of the darkness to engulf them like a tidal wave as they approached the gates.
“Drains,” said Harry stiffly.
“Drains!”
“Well, actually, they’re not really drains. They’re fortifications in case the Residency has to be defended. It’s the Collector’s idea, you know.” Harry’s tone was disapproving. The military at Captainganj took a dim view of the Collector’s earthworks, a view which Harry shared. Some people, Harry knew, would have put it more bluntly and said that the Collector had gone mad. Everybody at Captainganj believed that there was no danger at all, of course, but that what danger there was, would be maximized by the Collector’s display of trepidation. All the same, the Collector wielded the supreme authority in Krishnapur, an authority even higher than that of General Jackson. The General could do what he liked at Captainganj but that was the limit of his estate; his authority was cushioned all around by that of the Collector whose empire ran to the horizon in every direction. In Harry’s view, the Collector’s authority resembled in many ways that of a Roman emperor; however fallible a Collector might be as a human being, as a representative of the Company he commanded respect. It was in the nature of things that sometimes a Roman emperor, or a Collector, would go mad, insist on promoting his horse to be a general, and would have to be humoured; such a danger exists in every rigid hierarchy. But the feeling at Captainganj was that it could not have happened at a worse time; the military were being made to look ridiculous. Word of the Collector’s behaviour in Calcutta had already come back to the barracks, together with mocking comments from brother officers at other stations. Nobody likes ridicule, even when undeserved, but to a soldier it is like a bed of fiery coals. The Residency was not their province, but people would think, or pretend to think, that it was; people would say they were “croaking”! The Collector’s timorous behaviour would rub off on them.
And yet, although Harry thought all this, he could not bring himself to say it … at least, not to Fleury; in private with a brother officer, perhaps, he might allow himself to rant against the Collector, but with a stranger, even one who was almost a cousin, it would have offended his sense of honour. So the most he could permit himself about the drains was a tone of disapproval … but in any case, by now they had left them behind and their boots were clattering on the steps of the portico.
The Residency was lamplit at this time of night. The marble staircase which faced Fleury as he entered gave him the delicious sensation of entering a familiar and civilized house; his eyes, which had been starved of such nouri
shment since he had left Calcutta, greedily followed the swerve of its bannister until it curled into itself like a ram’s horn at the bottom. Other Europeans besides Fleury had feasted their eyes on this staircase; in Calcutta one might not have noticed it particularly, but here in the Krishnapur cantonment all the other houses were of one storey; to be able to go upstairs was a luxury available only to the Collector and his guests. Indeed, the only other dwelling in the neighbourhood which could boast a staircase was the palace of the Maharajah of Krishnapur; not that this was much use to the English community, because, although he had a fine son who had been educated in Calcutta by English tutors, the old Maharajah himself was eccentric, libidinous, and spoke no English.
Two chandeliers hung over the long walnut dining table and their rainbow glints were reflected in its polished surface. Fleury’s spirits had been instantly restored, thanks partly to the civilized atmosphere of the Residency, partly to the Collector’s “drains” which had reminded him what an entertaining character his host was. He began to look around eagerly for further signs of eccentricity. At the same time he tried to sort out the names of all the people he had just been introduced to. He had been greeted warmly by Dr and Mrs Dunstaple, and inaudibly by Louise who was now standing a little way back from the table, fair and pale, her long golden curls flowing out like a bow-wave from the parting on top of her head, slender fingers resting absently on … well, on what looked like a machine of some kind. “Hello, what have we here?” Fleury crowed inwardly. “A machine in the dining-room, how deuced peculiar!” He peered at it more closely, causing Louise to release it from her tender fingers and drift away, ignoring him. It was a rectangular metal box with a funnel at one end and cog-wheels on both sides. A faint fragrance of lemon verbena stole up behind him. He turned to find the Collector watching him moodily.
The Siege of Krishnapur Page 5