“Miriam,” she said instead, “I cannot tell you how worried I am for Harry. He is so young and innocent; although he pretends to be a man he is still only a schoolboy. And now he is in such danger! I have tried to talk to him but he will not listen.”
“But, my dear, there is no way that danger may be avoided whilst this dreadful siege lasts.”
(“The letter killeth, the spirit giveth life!” exclaimed the Collector fervently.)
“Alas, it’s not physical danger that I fear for him...or rather, I fear that too, but since we are all in God’s hands I trust that He will not forsake us...no, it’s another danger that I fear for him. My dear, you cannot have failed to see how Lucy is leading him on. Think what unhappy circumstances would attend his career if he should now be trapped by a penniless girl without family whose reputation is known throughout India.”
Miriam was silent. To worry that your brother might make an unfortunate marriage when at any moment he might be killed was something she found difficult to understand. But in a sense, too, she knew that Louise was not wrong to worry about Harry committing such a blunder, for Harry, moving in the social circles in which he would move, if he survived the siege, to the day of his death, would almost certainly suffer the inconveniences of having such a wife, would regret his marriage, and perhaps in due course would come to believe that his life had been ruined. He would be bound by the social fetters of Lucy’s unsuitability simply because he too would believe in them.
“I don’t think you should worry. Harry will probably get over his affection for Lucy once we return to a normal life again. And in any case, what Lucy may have done was surely not so dreadful and will be soon forgotten. A moment of foolishness with a man in one’s youth, Louise dear, is more common even among the better classes than you might think. Lucy is much to be pitied. Let us worry about her future when the siege is over.”
“But now she has gone to live in the banqueting hall where she will be able to use her...” Louise was going to say “feminine wiles” but hesitated, afraid that Miriam might find this ridiculous, and uncertain, in any case, exactly what “feminine wiles” might amount to. “...where she will be able to see Harry all the time,” she corrected herself.
“With so many people under the same roof, my dear, Harry will be in no danger.”
Presently, in the silence that followed these remarks, the two young women heard the sound of distant guns...more distant, it seemed, than the sepoy cannons which had been firing intermittently throughout their conversation; this sound echoed from across the dark rim of the plain. “Could it be the guns of a relief force?” Miriam was wondering as the first fat drops of rain splashed on the verandah.
“Rain! It’s come at last!”
Almost immediately the first breath of cooler air reached them. The rain steadily increased in force, blotting out the fires on the hill above the melon beds, increasing the darkness until they could make out nothing in the compound below, and driving them back from the streaming verandah. Soon it had become a continuous deluge as if countless buckets of black ink were being emptied from the sky above them.
“In a moment it will be time to give Mr Hopkins another half ounce of brandy, poor man,” sighed Miriam. The excitement of this first fall of rain had filled her with a desire that things should be different, that she should be happy again.
For the rest of the night the rain cascaded from the verandah roof, but the Collector paid no heed to it...he continued to mutter urgently to himself, thrashing weakly, possessed with the vehemence of a strange inner life where no one could reach him. The lamp beside his bed threw a faint glow over his swollen, passionate, tormented face.
21
On the following day Dr McNab made an incision in the Collector’s right eyelid and a small quantity of pus escaped. Disturbed, the Doctor examined the rest of the Collector’s body with care to see if there were any further local formations of pus gathering beneath the skin. There was a danger that the blood would become poisoned by pus or by some other morbid agent which would render death by pyaemia inevitable. The Collector’s delirium still continued and he was undoubtedly becoming weaker; because of these continuing symptoms McNab now substituted bark, chloric aether, and ammonia in effervescence for the laudanum and asked Miriam to increase the brandy to half an ounce every hour. Although he did not say so it was evident that he still regarded the Collector’s condition as serious; the one hopeful sign was that his pulse had become fuller and less frequent. Convinced that he was going to die, his brood of terrified, velvet-clad children came to his bedside and stood there, the eldest holding the youngest, dutifully watching the thrashings of their parent, until Miriam packed them off.
For the moment the sepoys had stopped firing and an eerie hush had settled over the Residency. A night and a day of intermittent rainstorms followed. From the roof it could be seen that the sepoys had remained in their positions and were building themselves shelters. The garrison conjectured that the sepoys’ powder had been soaked by the downpour...there was even wild talk of breaking out of the enclave and escaping to safety. But, alas, there was no sense in this. Even if they succeeded in breaking through the sepoy lines, where would they go? Where did safety lie on that vast, hostile plain? The silence continued, broken only by the shrieking and quarrelling of crows and parakeets. And now gaily plumed water birds began to appear on the rapidly swelling river. The birds had a new and shiny look; in India only the animals and the people look starved, ragged, and exhausted.
The heat, which had declined a little at the coming of the rains, grew more oppressive than ever. At night a clamour of frogs and crickets arose and this diabolical piping served to string nerves which were already humming tight a little tighter. The connecting trench was constantly full of water now, and because the firing-step was in danger of crumbling there was no alternative for someone who wanted to visit the other wheel but to wade through water and mud. The coming of the rains brought no physical relief to the besieged but in one respect it made things worse; the smell from the decaying offal and from the corpses of men and animals became intolerable and hung constantly, undisturbed by wind, as a foul miasma over the fortifications. While the lull in the firing persisted, the Magistrate ordered earth to be thrown over the rotting mountain of offal in order to cover it like the crust of a pie. But as soon as the next downpour came the crust was soaked, vile gas bubbles would belch forth from it and infect the surrounding air. The ladies in the billiard room kept a small fire of smashed furniture smouldering by the window and occasionally burned camphor in an attempt to palliate this tormenting odour.
But besides the lull in firing the rains did bring one advantage; the spectators were driven away from the hill above the melon beds. No longer did the garrison feel that their sufferings were taking place for the amusement of the crowd. But gradually even so, a new fatalism took hold of everyone. Some of those who did not possess a faith in God which was proof against all adversities now saw that the great hope of a relief force reaching them, which had so far buoyed them up, was an illusory one; even if a relief now came, in many different ways it would be too late...and not only because so many of the garrison were already dead; India itself was now a different place; the fiction of happy natives being led forward along the road to civilization could no longer be sustained. Perhaps this was in the Collector’s mind as he lay there, silent and motionless now that the fever had left him and he was beginning to recover. By the end of the third day his delirium had diminished, by the fifth day it had gone entirely and the redness and swelling of his face had also begun to disappear. Dr McNab now ordered the stimulants to be decreased gradually from day to day, meat and beer from the stores being substituted for the brandy and beef tea. At last, he was convalescent.
The illness had aged him. He lay still for hour after hour, naked beneath a sheet because of the heat and humidity, the mosquito net cast aside for air, too exhausted even to lift an arm to drive away the mosquitoes which constantly set
tled on his face. Miriam or one of the older children of the garrison who could no longer play outside since the shrinking of the perimeter sat constantly at his bedside to fan him and to defend him against the mosquitoes. He said nothing. He seemed too exhausted even to speak or move his eyes.
Miriam, too, was very tired. Her body itched constantly and salt crystals from the drying of perspiration clung to the hair of her armpits and rimed her skin. Life no longer seemed real to her. As the hours fled by she was sometimes unable to remember whether it was night or day. In a dream, which was not a dream, she was called away to assist Dr McNab perform an amputation on a Sikh whose arm had been shattered by shrapnel. The man was too weak for chloroform and had to be held by two of the dispensers, yet he did not utter a groan throughout the operation. Afterwards she found herself back at the Collector’s bedside in the same churning confusion of day and night.
“What’s that noise? Is that the sepoys?”
“Frogs.” Miriam could hardly believe that he had spoken at last.
“Then it must have rained at last.”
“It’s been raining for a week.”
When at last he was able to throw aside his damp sheet and make his way to the window the panorama he had last seen on the day of the sepoy attack had been transformed. The glaring desert had turned a brilliant green. Foliage sprouted everywhere. Even the lawns had been restored, like emerald carpets unrolled before his eyes; sunblasted trees which might have been thought dead had miraculously clothed themselves with leaves. Only the new trench leading to the banqueting hall cut a brown gash through the green, but even there green mustaches were perhaps beginning to cover the lips of the parapets...the Collector hoped they were: he did not want the ramparts to be washed away.
Presently Miriam entered the room and found him, half dressed, sitting on his bed with his head resting wearily against the pillows.
“Now that I’ve recovered we must think of your reputation, Mrs Lang.”
“After all this, Mr Hopkins, do you think that reputations still matter?”
“If they don’t matter, then nothing does. We must obey the rules.”
“Like your precious hive of bees at the Exhibition? I’m glad you still believe in them.”
“It’s hard to learn new tricks,” said the Collector smiling doubtfully, “especially when you reach my age. Have you any idea where my boots are, Mrs Lang?”
“Under the bed. But I don’t think that Dr McNab would be pleased to see you getting up so soon.”
“I must.”
“Because of the bees?” And Miriam shook her head, half smiling, half concerned.
The Collector sat for a long time contemplating his boots which, because of the dampness, had become covered in green mould. His shoes, his books, his leather trunks and saddlery would similarly be covered in green mould and would remain so now until the end of the rainy season. The Collector wondered whether the garrison, too, would become covered in green mould.
He saw his reflection in the mirror as he was adjusting his collar; not only had his side-whiskers grown while he had been ill, there was also a growth of beard on his chin. He was shocked to see that this beard, unlike his hair and whiskers which were dark brown in colour, was sprouting with an atheistical tint of ginger, only a little darker than the whiskers of the free-thinking Magistrate. Later, seated dizzily at the desk in his study, he reached for a piece of paper to write some orders for the defence of the banqueting hall. But the paper was so damp that his pen merely furrowed it, as if he were writing on a slab of butter.
22
Now, as always at the beginning of the rainy season, dense black clouds began to roll in over the Residency from the direction of the river, advancing slowly, not more than a few feet above the ground and masking completely whatever lay in their path. These black clouds were formed of insects called cockchafers, or “flying bugs”, as the English called them; they were black as pitch and quite harmless, but with a sickening odour which they lent to anything they touched. When the cockchafers arrived, Lucy, the O’Hanlon sisters, Harry, Fleury, Mohammed and Ram were all seated around a little fire in the middle of the floor of the banqueting hall not too far from the baronial fireplace which had unfortunately become impossible to reach through the stacks of “possessions”; this fire had been cleverly made by Lucy herself out of bits and pieces of smashed furniture; a large “gothic” chair of oak, which Lucy’s lovely but not very powerful muscles had been unable to get the better of, lay on its side with one leg in the fire while the kettle hung from the leg above it, an ingenious idea of Lucy’s own. Lucy had just made tea and was boiling the kettle again for another cup; by now supplies of milk and sugar were exhausted and tea had to be drunk without either. Harry was a little worried to see the water supply diminishing so rapidly but was pleased that Lucy was enjoying herself. She had gone through rather a bad patch since she had come to live in the banqueting hall. Once or twice, when Harry and Fleury had had to leave her to her own devices for a few moments in order to fight off the sepoys, she had become very upset and had made little attempt to conceal the fact.
Not long ago she had begun to talk of life not being worth living again and she had demanded that Harry should tell her, once and for all, why it was worth living. She did not seem to mind that she was distressing poor Harry by such questions. She had said that, in the circumstances and since he could do nothing but mumble, she would probably kill herself. She was so hungry...so tired and hot. When the rations were yet again reduced, that was really the last straw. No, she did not want some of Harry’s handful of flour and dal! She wanted a decent meal with vegetables and meat.
Harry and Fleury conferred about this problem and decided that they would club together and see if they could afford to buy some hermetically sealed provisions when there was an auction, though with the prices that food fetched now in private barter they were not very hopeful. Fleury and Harry were becoming dreadfully hungry, too, but Lucy and the O’Hanlons must come first, of course. They had approached Barlow to see if he would be prepared to contribute, but Barlow had made it clear that he would not.
“The Eurasian women are managing alright so why can’t Miss Hughes?”
The answer, as far as Lucy was concerned, was that she was a more fragile flower altogether, but if that was not obvious to Barlow there was no use in trying to explain it to him. The young men were very indignant with Barlow. Their indignation acted on Lucy like a tonic and she cheered up considerably.
A little while ago, Lucy had commanded her favourites to come and have tea. Her favourites included Ram and all the Europeans except Barlow and Vokins. Vokins, branded indelibly as one of the servants, had not even been considered for an invitation. She had also decided to invite Louise and Miriam, whom she wanted to impress with her domestic abilities, but only after a struggle in which she was torn between the pleasure of impressing them and the displeasure of having two more women and thereby disturbing what she considered to be a favourable balance of the sexes. They seemed to have been delayed, however.
Her guests might have preferred to drink their tea on the verandah outside, since at that moment it was not raining. Inside, it was so hot and humid, and the smoke, which was supposed to vanish towards the great baronial chimney, hung in the air instead and stung your eyes. But Lucy’s invitations were not open to negotiation, and none of her favourites had thought it wise to refuse. So now, although her guests had really had enough tea and would rather have been somewhere else, everyone was showing signs of impatience for another cup. But just as the kettle was coming to the boil a black cloud billowed in through one of the open windows and enveloped the entire tea party.
Fleury had not finished his first cup when this happened. As he raised it to his lips he saw that it was brimming with drowned black insects. Both his arms were covered in seething black sleeves, a moment later and his face was covered with insects, too, and they were pouring down the front of his shirt. He opened his mouth to protest an
d insects promptly filled that too. Spluttering and spitting and brushing at himself he dashed to a clearer part of the hall.
The cloud of cockchafers presently thinned a little, but everything round about lay under drifts of glistening black snow. The fire had been doused under a great, smoking heap of insects; the human beings shook themselves like dogs to rid themselves of the sickening creatures, which were showing, for some reason, perhaps because she was wearing a white muslin dress, a particular desire to land on Lucy.
Poor Lucy! Her nerves had already been in a bad enough state. She leapt to her feet with a cry which was instantly stifled by a mouthful of insects. She beat at her face, her bosom, her stomach, her hips, with hands which looked as if they were dripping with damson jam. Her hair was crawling with insects; they clung to her eyebrows and eyelashes, were sucked into her nostrils and swarmed into the crevices and cornices of her ears, into all the narrow loops and whorls, they poured in a dark river down the back of her dress between her shoulder-blades and down the front between her breasts. No wonder the poor girl found herself tearing away her clothes with frenzied fingers as she felt them pullulating beneath her chemise; this was no time to worry about modesty. Her muslin dress, her petticoats, chemise and underlinen were all discarded in a trice and there she stood, stark naked but as black and glistening as an African slave-girl. How those flying bugs loved Lucy’s white skin! Hardly had her damson-dripping fingers scooped a long white furrow from her thigh to her breast before the blackness would swirl back over it. Then she gave up trying to scrape them away and stood there weakly, motionless with horror. As you looked at her more and more insects swarmed on to her; then, as the weight grew too much for the insects underneath to cling to her smooth skin, great black cakes of them flaked away and fell fizzing to the ground. While Fleury and Harry exchanged glances of shock and bewilderment at the unfortunate turn the tea party had suddenly taken, an effervescent mass detached itself from one of her breasts, which was revealed to be the shape of a plump carp, then from one of her diamond knee-caps, then an ebony avalanche thundered from her spine down over her buttocks, then from some other part of her. But hardly had a white part been exposed before blackness covered it again. This coming and going of black and white was just fast enough to give a faint, flickering image of Lucy’s delightful nakedness and all of a sudden gave Fleury an idea. Could one have a series of daguerrotypes which would give the impression of movement? “I must invent the ‘moving daguerrotype’ later on when I have a moment to spare,” he told himself, but an instant later this important idea had gone out of his mind, for this was an emergency.
The Empire Trilogy Page 74