by M. M. Kaye
‘A bourka for the bride!’ called Ameera. ‘My little cousin goes to her wedding, and we cannot let other men’s eyes peer at her by the way.’
And at that they had all laughed together with a noise like a flock of starlings, and swept out to the door of the women’s quarters to see the guests off on their journey.
That journey was perhaps the happiest time that Winter de Ballesteros, going to her wedding, had known since the long-ago days of the Gulab Mahal. Here was a friend and a companion of her own age, and here once more was all the warmth and wonder of the old happy memories coming alive again. The very scent and sound of the days that she had kept alive with Zobeida’s help and a desperate and tenacious effort of will, because it had so often seemed to be all that she had to cling to. She told Ameera all that had happened to her, and heard in return all the news of the Gulab Mahal.
There were, as Ameera had said, few left in the Rose Palace who would remember the Little Pearl, for the cholera had taken a heavy toll. Dasim, son of old Ali Shah’s brother, the young and handsome man who had looked too often at the white and gold Sabrina for Aziza Begum’s peace of mind, was now an elderly gentleman whose wife, a soured and shrewish woman from Faizabad - Ameera pulled her laughing face into an expression of mock malice - was the senior lady of the household, though Dasim had acquired two junior wives and now possessed the three permitted by the Prophet.
Ameera’s sister, a baby who had been born in the fateful January that had seen the retreat from Kabul and the disastrous end of the first Afghan War, had died too of the cholera, but the son who had been born in the same year as Winter was now a young man nearing his eighteenth birthday:
‘A wild youth,’ said Ameera, shaking her head sadly. ‘But he is young. He will learn. At the moment it is all drink and devilry with him, and he is easily led by bad companions. It will pass.’
Ameera had married her second cousin, Walayat Shah; a petty nobleman who had occupied one of the numerous hereditary and lucrative sinecures at the dissolute court of the King of Oudh. The annexation had dispossessed him of employment and livelihood and he and his family lived now at the Gulab Mahal. The loss of power, privilege and revenue had enraged Walayat Shah against the feringhis, so that it would be better, explained Ameera regretfully, if Winter did not visit the Gulab Mahal just yet. Men were apt to get hot and angry. They had less patience than women, and although she herself considered that the action of the Company had been high-handed and unnecessary - for were there not others of the royal line to replace Wajid Ali if he had offended? - she was happy to be back in the Gulab Mahal and had no wish to kill and burn. She had heard no good of Wajid Ali while he had reigned, and now that he had been deposed she could see little point in plunging the state into bloodshed in order to reinstate him. She had her children’s safety to think of, and for their sake would be content to live quietly in the Gulab Mahal under any government that could be trusted to keep order.
‘Your children?’ exclaimed Winter, instantly diverted from politics to the personal. ‘Have you children? How lovely. How many?’
‘I have two sons,’ said Ameera proudly. One was four years old and the other three, and they had been left in the care of her husband’s mother while she had been away on a visit to attend the wedding of a near relative: she would have taken them with her, but that her husband’s mother had forbidden it for fear that they might fall ill or meet with some accident on the journey, and now she could not wait to get back to them.
‘Three weeks! I have not seen them for three weeks - and it has been like three years. If it were not that I cannot spare even another hour from them, I would remain for thy shadi, Little Pearl. When thou art wed and have sons of thine own thou wilt know how it is with me.’
Ameera’s road lay through Lunjore and across the bridge of boats, but when some five days later they neared the outskirts of the city she would not come to the Residency, but stopped the ruth and sent one of her servants to fetch a hired carriage: ‘I have thought,’ said Ameera lovingly, ‘that it were better if thou didst not arrive at thy bridegroom’s house with a cousin who is not of thy own race. I have heard that there are those among the sahib-log who do not look kindly on such things. But we will meet again. Surely, surely we will meet again! And now, as thou hast no woman of thine own to attend thee, Hamida here will go with thee. Nay, nay, we arranged it all last night whilst thou wert asleep. It is not seemly for thee to go to thy husband with no woman to attend thee. If he has procured another for thee, then she can return.’
The two young women embraced, and Hamida collected her own and Winter’s belongings and followed her out into the road. A moment later the gaily decorated ruth with its mounted escort had rumbled away down the long, tree-shaded road. A slim hand waved briefly from between the embroidered curtains and Ameera was gone.
Winter, no longer in native dress but wearing a light-coloured riding-habit, stood by the side of the road looking after the dust cloud that hid the ruth and blinking back tears from her eyes, until Hamida, scandalized by the staring crowd of country folk who had paused to gape at the sight of a strange memsahib, hurried her into the hired carriage.
They were driven away through the hot sunlight towards the cantonments, and presently they reached a long white road bordered by trees and a high wall, and came at last to a huge castellated gateway of whitewashed stone, wide enough to admit a carriage and high enough to allow for the passage of a howdahed elephant. A gateway splashed with flamboyant colour from the bougainvillea that climbed its sides and hung in vivid masses from the parapet, and under whose deep, shadowed archway Sabrina Grantham, Condesa de los Aguilares, had ridden eighteen long years ago, to stay with her Uncle Ebenezer as a guest at the Residency where his nephew Conway was now Commissioner.
25
Sabrina’s daughter did not look up at the gateway but forward at the long drive that curled through the chequered shadows towards the high, single-storied house that was to be her home. She was here at last. Conway was in that house, and very soon now she would be married to him.
The carriage drew up under a stone porch festooned with flowering creeper, and a startled chupprassi gaped at the girl in the close-fitting riding-habit who descended from it. The Residency servants had been aware for many months of their master’s approaching marriage, but they had not expected the bride for another two weeks, and several of them gathered to stare and exchange agitated whispers.
Yes, agreed Durga Charan the head chupprassi cautiously, straightening his turban with an agitated hand, the Commissioner Sahib was at home, but he could see no one. He was indisposed - far too sick to receive visitors.
‘I know,’ said Winter. ‘That is why I have come. I will see the Sahib at once. Show me to his room.’
The head chupprassi, already bewildered by this young Miss-sahib who showed such an unexpected command of his own language, made an ineffectual attempt to stop her, but Winter swept past him and into the wide hall.
Conway’s bedroom was darkened by curtains drawn across the windows. It smelt unpleasant, and there was a woman in it. A plump native woman dressed in brightly coloured spangled muslin, who crouched on the floor beside the bed and waved a palm-leaf fan. The woman looked up, startled by Winter’s entrance, and rose with a clash of anklets and jewellery. She was fat and past her first youth, but in a bold, florid manner, not unbeautiful. She had been chewing pan, and the smell of it, allied to the musk with which she was scented, almost overpowered the stench of sickness and brandy. She seemed an unsuitable sickroom attendant, and she stared at Winter in indignation and hostility, her kohl-blackened eyes enormous in her plump dark face.
‘The Sahib is not well,’ said the woman in a shrill, angry voice. ‘He can see no one. No one!’
‘He will see me,’ said Winter, and walked past her to the bed.
The heap on the bed moaned, grunted and stirred, and said in a thick voice: ‘Wha’s that? Wha’s that? Shurrup, can’t you! Filthy din—’
&n
bsp; It turned over on its back and groaned aloud, and Winter looked down at a bloated, unrecognizable face. Was this - could this be Conway? She had expected to find a worn, haggard, perhaps even grey-haired skeleton of a man, wasted by fever, and this fat bloated face, yellow in the dim light of the curtained room, was entirely and unexpectedly shocking. A reek of stale spirits and foul breath made her draw back sharply. They had been dosing him with brandy! Surely that could not be a good thing for fever?
And then suddenly she remembered what Mr Carroll had said. ‘A swelling fever.’ Of course! That was why Conway looked so bulky and bloated. No wonder he had not wished her to see him like this. No wonder, not knowing her well enough to trust in her devotion to him, he had feared the effect it might have upon her. Pity and love choked her and her eyes filled with compassionate tears. She bent over him and laid a cool hand on his forehead.
Conway grunted and opened his eyes with an effort. He stared up at her for a long time, trying to focus her and completely at a loss. Must have been drunker than he had thought last night - or was it the opium? God, what a head he had! Tongue like a roll of dusty matting. He’d seen things before, but they had been strange spotted things that had crawled or hopped. Not women. Not young and beautiful women. Couldn’t be the brandy. Must be the opium. The creature was speaking. He wished that she would stop speaking and go away. He liked women, but not after a thick night. At the moment noise - any noise - hurt his head abominably …
‘ … Winter. Conway, it’s Winter. Conway dear, don’t you know me? Why did you not tell me you were ill? I have come to look after you. You will be well soon, dearest. Conway, it’s I - Winter. Dearest, I am here—’
At long last, through the thick, sick, agonizing torment that filled his head and stomach, the sense of the words penetrated … Winter! It wasn’t the opium or the brandy. This was the fortune that he was going to marry. The ugly, skinny, dark-eyed creature from Ware. She was here. How she had got here he did not know … Surely he could not have collapsed from the effects of a debauch and been unconscious for weeks? Hardly. What did it matter anyway? The girl was here. Must get rid of her. He was going to be sick again any minute, and that would finish it. Must get rid of her—
He was sick. Exceedingly sick. But in the more lucid interval that followed he discovered with amazement that she was holding his head and bathing his forehead with cold water; whispering endearments and telling him that he would soon be well. Yasmin, standing by in stunned fury, began to protest, and Conway turned his head slowly - he could not turn his eyes - and spoke a single virulent word of dismissal.
The small, cool hands pressed his head back upon the pillow and he lay still with closed eyes, trying to think; dimly aware of disaster and the need for action. Presently he opened his eyes a little, peering at her under puffy, half-closed lids, and said thickly: ‘Didn’t expect you. Good of you t’come. Call Ismail, there’s a good girl. M’bearer.’
The portly bearer, who had been hovering outside the door with a whispering and curious crowd of servants, hurried to his master’s side, and after a brief and muttered colloquy turned to Winter and salaamed deeply. If the Miss-sahib would follow him he would show her to her room, and refreshments would be brought. The Huzoor wished Ismail to attend upon him.
‘Go with him,’ said Conway, forcing the words with an effort. ‘Y’ can come back later.’
When the door had closed upon her he crawled out of bed and dragged himself to the bathroom. The water in the earthenware gurra was cold from the cool night, and he took a tin dipper and sloshed it over his head and shoulders, shuddering at the shock of the chilly cataract on his hot, sweating body and coldly sweating head. Ismail, returning, applied a variety of well-tried remedies, and the Commissioner groaned and staggered back to his bedroom to subside heavily into a chair, and demanded brandy.
‘Hot milk is better for the opium,’ advised Ismail, leering.
‘Well, mix ’em together then. Quickly! And tell that bitch Yasmin to keep to her own quarters.’
He drank the brew of hot milk and brandy and felt sufficiently recovered to demand an explanation of his future wife’s arrival. Ismail had heard it all from those who had witnessed the Miss-sahib’s arrival, and also from the ayah whom the Miss-sahib had brought with her.
Conway listened, dazed, half-stupid and racked with recurrent waves of nausea and futile rage. Damn the girl! What had possessed her to come gallivanting off on her own? It was unheard of! It would ruin all. He would not have had this happen for the world. He had intended to arrange for the wedding to take place within an hour or two of her arrival, so as to allow her no time to change her mind. And now she had arrived unexpectedly, and alone, and had found him suffering from the after-effects of a debauch in a house stinking of spirits and the sandalwood and essences of the five nautch-girls from the city who, with Yasmin, had entertained his guests at a bachelor party he had given on the previous night. What had possessed the girl to descend upon him like this? Or had she heard rumours, and wished to catch him out unawares?
‘The Miss-sahib, hearing that the Huzoor was suffering from illness, hurried from Delhi in her haste to care for him,’ said Ismail, laying out clean linen.
Illness. She had said something to that effect, so she had. Why, of course! An innocent creature like that could have had no experience of drunkenness. She had imagined him to be suffering from some illness!
The way opened before him with such surprising simplicity that he would have laughed aloud if such a physical effort had not been too painful. She was here alone and unattended. There was no one she knew in Lunjore and she could not stay the night in his house unless she were married to him. It was all going to be quite easy after all. He would send for the padre and explain why, in order to protect the young bride’s reputation, the wedding must be performed immediately, and until the knot was tied he must keep up the fiction that he had been suffering from fever. It could not be better!
Revived and invigorated by the prospect he stumbled back to bed and ordered Ismail to send a message instantly to the padre-sahib requesting his immediate presence, and another to Colonel Moulson to say that he wished to see him. ‘And send in the barber to me, and get this room cleaned up, and open all the windows and clear the air a bit - no, don’t draw the curtains, you black bastard! Oh, and keep the Miss-sahib out of here, d’you hear? Tell her I’m asleep - in me bath - anything. But keep her out. Now hut jao - and jeldi!’
The padre, a thin young man suffering from weak eyes and incipient malaria, listened with an attempt at concentration to the explanation of the young Condesa’s unexpected arrival and unprotected state, and agreed, shivering with ague, that immediate marriage seemed the best solution to the difficulty, and that as the bridegroom was unfortunately in poor health the ceremony should be performed in the house. He would make the necessary arrangements, but the Commissioner must procure two witnesses.
Three hours later, in the cool, dim drawing-room, Sabrina’s daughter stood before a makeshift altar between burning candles and was married to the nephew of Emily and Ebenezer.
She had brought her wedding-dress with her, but she did not wear it, for she had no hoops to support its spreading folds, and no desire to explain at this juncture why she should be without a crinoline. She wore instead the pale grey riding-habit in which she had arrived, and carried a bunch of the white jasmine that grew by the porch. Hamida had tucked jasmine blossoms into her black hair, and dropping the filmy bridal veil over her head had frowned, saying that white veils were more suited to widows than to brides.
Hamida was uneasy. She had no knowledge of the ways of ‘sahib-log’, but the Commissioner’s servants appeared to hold him in scant respect behind his back, and half an hour in the Residency had left her under no delusions as to what type of woman it was who occupied the bibi-gurh - the small detached house that lay behind the main building and was screened from it by a discreet hedge of poinsettia and a cluster of pepper trees.
; It had been no unusual thing in the past for the sahibs to install Indian women in their compounds, and there had been a time when such a practice was encouraged. Not only because the lack of white women drove men to consort with prostitutes, and therefore to take a morganatic wife or a mistress from among the women of the country was considered preferable, but because close association with such women taught them more of the country, and gave them a better understanding of the men under their command. Many had married Indian women, and Lady Wheeler, wife of the British General commanding at Cawnpore, was known to be an Indian lady of good family. But with the arrival of more and more white women in the country these relationships became fewer, and Hamida considered that out of respect to his bride the Commissioner-Sahib should have pensioned off the occupants of the bibi-gurh before her arrival. Hamida viewed the situation with suspicion and took an instant dislike to the Commissioner’s servants, whom she considered lax and insolent.
But if Hamida had qualms, Winter had none. Her only anxiety was on the score of Conway’s health, and she was alarmed at hearing of his intention to leave his bed for the ceremony. Surely a man who had been ill for so long should not be allowed to rise and be kept standing even for a short time? Supposing he should suffer a relapse? Conway had, however, assured her that her arrival had already worked such wonders on his spirits that he felt himself to be a new man, and as he was already on the mend such a small exertion on so happy an occasion could do him no harm.
That had been in the course of a brief interview in the darkened bedroom where the curtains had remained drawn against the strong sunlight. The Reverend Eustace Chillingham, who had also been present, had been surprised to learn that the Commissioner had been so ill, since he had previously heard nothing of such a thing; but he was feeling too ill himself to pay much attention to the matter.