by M. M. Kaye
‘… Wae nadani ki waqt-e-marg
Yhi sabit hua
Khwab tha jo kuchh ki dekha jo
Suna afsani tha.’
Winter said: ‘Nani - Ameera’s grandmother - used to sing that. “Alas we were all ignorant and only at the time of our death was it proved that whatever we had seen was all a dream, and whatever we had heard was a short tale.” It’s a song that was sung long before Plassey was fought. This is such an old country—’
‘No, it isn’t,’ said Alex. ‘It’s new. It’s as new as - as Russia, if you like.’
Winter turned to smile at him in the dusk. ‘Now you are just arguing for the sake of argument.’
‘No, I’m not. Anything that has such tremendous possibilities and horizons is new. We are old. You can predict more or less what will happen to us. But you cannot predict what will happen to her. She has lain fallow for centuries - they still use the same methods of ploughing and irrigation that they used when we were wearing skins and living in caves. They’ve gone to seed. But seed if it’s ploughed into the ground produces something new. Think of what they could do! We’ve started them off again - ploughed them in, if you like. They’ll hate us for it, but they wouldn’t have done anything for another hundred years or so if left to themselves. We’ve tried to go too quickly and force our way of life on them, but in a hundred years from now - or two hundred, or three - their history may show that Plassey wasn’t an end or a defeat, but a beginning. Even this that is happening now was probably needed.’
Winter turned quickly from the parapet and came to stand at the foot of his bed. ‘Needed? Why, Alex? Why? You can’t say that something as horrible and as cruel as this was needed! Mrs Hossack and that child of hers, and that child’s grandchildren, will remember some of the things that have been done. And so will Ameera’s children. They’ll go on hating.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Alex. ‘Though for ourselves we are poor haters and we have short memories. But I cannot believe that this revolt will not mean the end of the Company. I believe that the Crown will have to take over now, and if that happens it is going to mean an enormous stride forward as far as India is concerned. This may mean as much as Plassey. More!’
‘And when we go?’ asked Winter.
‘When we go Hinduism will probably come into its own again, and if they aren’t careful the country will drift back into an Eastern version of the Balkans - in which case Russia may well win the game after all! But one thing at least we can be certain of. All this that is happening now will not be regarded by them as a mutiny, but as a heroic War of Independence and Liberation. And because they are a young country they will deny their own atrocities and make political capital out of ours, and the truth - which is neither black nor white - will be lost. But I will have been dead a long time by then. And so will you! Here come the rest of the castaways. Unless it’s old Dasim.’
There were footsteps and low voices on the narrow stairs that led up to the roof, and then Carlyon was there, scowling at the sight of Winter and Alex talking together, and Mr Dobbie and the others followed behind him, coming up to breathe the cooler air now that the light was fading.
Arthur Carlyon was a handsome man and the Mussulman garb he wore suited his tall, broad-shouldered figure. Alex lay and watched him as he stood by the parapet talking to Winter, their figures outlined sharply against a green sky in which the first stars floated palely, and disliked him with an intensity and thoroughness that he had not thought himself capable of. But Winter had lost her fear of Carlyon, and, if she had thought about it at all, had forgiven him.
What he had done, or tried to do, belonged to the shadowy past and was completely unimportant. They had all passed through too much, and a yawning, unbridgeable gulf seemed to divide them from the life they had led before the Shaitan ka hawa - the ‘Devil’s Wind’ - had roared across India in the heat of May. Only the present was real; and even that possessed a dream-like unreality that was typified, thought Alex, by the two figures who stood against the darkening sky - an Eastern prince and princess; graceful, oriental, formalized. An illustration by a Persian court-painter to a story from the Arabian Nights - Prince Ahmed and the Fair Pari-Banou, who were, or had been, Baron Carlyon of Tetworth and Mrs Conway Barton.
Even Lou added no touch of reality to those days. The brittle, acid, fast-living, hard-drinking Mrs Josh Cottar of Lunjore had vanished without trace, and in her place was an anxious-eyed woman who looked ten or even twenty years older than that other Mrs Cottar, and who appeared to think of nothing but the welfare of a tiny, placid infant with a fuzz of red hair and round, solemn blue eyes.
‘Lou,’ said Alex crossly one evening, ‘you are getting to be a dead bore over that baby. I have it on the best authority – O’Dwyer’s - that she isn’t smiling at you. It’s wind.’
‘Dr O’Dwyer doesn’t know what he’s talking about,’ said Lou calmly. ‘Of course she’s smiling at me. She knows me.’
‘So she ought to. You never leave the wretched child alone for five minutes. What is Josh going to say to this?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Lou. And she might just as well have said ‘I don’t care’. ‘There, Alex! - she is smiling.’
‘Take it away,’ said Alex irritably. ‘It smells of sick. And so do you, Lou!’
He was abominably bad-tempered these days, and Winter put it down to the natural irritability of convalescence.
He had recovered to a reasonable extent, but he did not move from the pavilion on the roof, because the fever had an unpleasant habit of returning at unexpected intervals and he could not seem to get free of it. Also he preferred being left alone to being sent down to join the other men in a room on the lower floor. He considered that he saw quite enough of them as it was. They were allowed to come up to his roof on most evenings, since it was thought to be safer for them there than in the garden, and the women would usually join them for an hour or so.
There were only three women now - four, if one counted Lottie’s daughter. Miss Keir had never recovered from that nightmare journey in the covered cart. Her mind had given way, and her health had already been seriously affected by the privations she had endured in the weeks before her arrival at Pari. She had lingered on for a few days and died one hot night within a week of their arrival at the Gulab Mahal, and Lou Cottar had moved down into Mrs Hossack’s room in her place.
Lou had said that it was because Mrs Hossack was afraid of being alone, but Winter confided to Alex that she thought Lou had made the exchange because Mrs Hossack, as the mother of four, was a mine of information on the subject of babies, and could be relied upon to give helpful advice should any infantile crisis threaten Amanda.
Winter could not help feeling grateful for the exchange, though she had grown very fond of Lou and thought the baby a darling. But it was wonderful to have her room to herself again: her own room - Sabrina’s room. To be able to sit there in peace and quiet. To talk to Ameera there, and to the other women and children who would visit her, without Lou, restless and uncomprehending, sitting silent while they talked and laughed. The nights too were doubly restful now that there was no baby to demand food and Lou’s frequent and anxious attention.
‘Lou of all people!’ said Alex crossly. ‘I should have said that she was as unmaternally minded as a goldfish, yet here she is, reduced to a state of crooning imbecility in a mere matter of weeks. I am beginning to think that I made a great mistake in assisting that infant to get born. It will be a lesson to me to mind my own business in future.’
He turned on his elbow to look at Winter, and said disagreeably: ‘I don’t see you making much fuss over the brat. Are you devoid of any maternal instincts, Mrs Barton?’
‘No,’ said Winter, giving the matter thought. ‘But you see, it isn’t my baby.’
‘It isn’t Lou’s,’ said Alex.
‘Yes it is. Lottie gave it to her.’
‘And I wonder,’ said Alex unpleasantly, ‘what Edward English’s parents are going to say to that?
’
It was a thought that frequently worried Lou. Supposing that Edward’s parents demanded the child?
‘They can’t have her!’ thought Lou. ‘She’s mine! They couldn’t take her—’
She lay awake at night worrying about it, when she was not worrying about the child’s health. Amanda’s health need not have given her so much anxiety. The tiny creature throve and gained weight and ceased to wail and whimper. It was in fact a remarkably placid baby, and as babies go a very pretty one. Lou adored it.
‘Has she been christened?’ asked Mrs Hossack one day.
‘Christened?’ Lou looked up from bathing Amanda in a small metal basin. ‘No, of course not. How could she be?’
‘There’s Mr Dobbie,’ said Mrs Hossack. ‘He’s a clergyman so he could do it. She should be christened. It’s safer.’
‘Safer? What do you mean, safer?’ demanded Lou impatiently.
‘Supposing she should get ill, and die - you would not want her not to be saved,’ said Mrs Hossack.
Lou had glared at her, clutching the child. ‘She isn’t going to die! What nonsense you talk, Ida!’
But the thought of having the child christened had taken possession of her. Not because she paid any attention to Mrs Hossack’s lugubrious views, or that she believed that an unbaptized child would be refused admittance into Heaven. It was the thought of Edward English’s parents that weighed with Lou. They might have their own ideas as to names. The child was going to be christened Amanda, and also Cottar. The surname of English would be hers by law.
Fired with this idea Lou had approached Mr Dobbie, who had instantly agreed to perform the ceremony. Lou had long ago cut up her petticoat and various other articles of underwear to make napkins and other necessities for the child, and now she made a christening robe from her pantalettes and saw nothing humorous in the action.
Amanda Cottar English was christened ‘in the presence of this congregation’ on Alex’s roof in the late evening; Alex, Winter and Mrs Hossack standing as godparents. The ceremony brought a considerable portion of relief to Lou. It seemed to make Amanda more her own, and the claims of the misty and faraway Englishes - Lou was not aware that Edward had been orphaned for several years - faded and became less alarming.
But its repercussions were unexpected.
48
The fact that there was a clergyman available who was qualified to perform Holy Offices had dawned suddenly upon Lord Carlyon.
It was surprising that it had not done so before, for Mr Dobbie had held frequent services ever since their arrival. But it had not occurred to any of them that he could also officiate at other ceremonies of the Church. It did so now, and Carlyon had managed to get Winter to himself in the garden two evenings later.
It had rained heavily that day, but now the skies were clear and the garden smelt fresh and fragrant in the dusk. They had all gone out to walk under the orange trees because Alex had suffered a relapse and had been feverish all day, and Dr O’Dwyer had decreed that he must have quiet.
Moonlight had filled the garden with pale shadows before the last of the twilight had faded, and Carlyon had stood among the orange trees and once again asked Winter to marry him. Not at some future date when they could escape from this house and from Lucknow - if they should ever escape - but now, at once. Tonight or tomorrow. Dobbie could marry them …
‘I haven’t anything to offer you now. I’m just a penniless prisoner. But when we get away it will be different. Then I can—’
Winter put a hand on his arm, checking him. ‘Don’t! please don’t.’ Her voice was quick and distressed and her face in the soft moonlight was troubled. ‘If - if I loved you it wouldn’t matter if you could never give me anything but yourself. But I don’t, and so I cannot marry you.’
‘Why? Why not? You need someone to look after you; to protect you. I would take care of you. I love you - I can’t live without you! What does it matter whether you love me now or not? You would one day. I could make you. Barton is dead. Give me the right to take care of you. Winter - Winter—’
He had caught her hand, and she drew back quickly: ‘I am sorry. I cannot. Thank you for - for wanting to, but—’ She seemed to think the words were inadequate, and stood before him twisting her hands together as though she were trying to think of something less hollowly polite and baldly negative. But the moonlight showed him that there was a sudden abstracted look in the wide, black-lashed eyes, and he was seized with an angry and wounding conviction that she was not thinking of him at all, but of something or someone else.
He reached out and caught her hand again, gripping it by the wrist in a hard grasp that she could not break, and said hoarsely: ‘Is there anyone else? Is that why you won’t marry me? It was Barton before - who is it now? Is it Randall? I’ve seen the way you look at him sometimes. You were in the jungle with him for weeks, weren’t you.’
His rage boiled up until it seemed that it must choke him. Some part of his brain, standing coldly aloof - some part of the bored and cynical Arthur Carlyon of the London drawing-rooms - told him that he was making a vulgar, jealous and melodramatic scene; but he could not stop himself:
‘It is Randall, isn’t it? What is he to you? Are you his mistress? Do you spend your nights with him on that roof? Is that why you persuaded your black relatives to let him sleep up there instead of with us?’
He saw the shadowy reflection of a succession of emotions cross the face that the strengthening moonlight threw into sharp relief against the darkness of the orange trees: disgust, anger, contempt, and finally - and surprisingly - pity. As though she could understand the cruel pain that was responsible for that torrent of insult, and could sympathize with it. She stood quite still, waiting for him to finish, her eyes grave and steady. But it was the pity in them that hurt most and which drove him to the final stupidity.
He released her wrist and caught her swiftly into his arms as he had done once before in Delhi, and kissed her with angry violence. Kissed her mouth and eyes and throat again and again and as though he could not stop.
She had not struggled or cried out. Perhaps she had known that it would have done little good to do either. She had stood entirely still, enduring his bruising kisses as though she had been a lay figure without life or emotion, and her very immobility had brought him to his senses as nothing else could have done. He released her at last and stood back from her, breathing in hard gasps. She had not spoken, and after a moment she had turned and walked unhurriedly away between the orange trees of the walled garden, her pale-coloured Indian dress showing like a moth among the shadows, and the Indian jewellery she wore making a soft chinking sound that died away into the dusk.
Mrs Hossack, who was walking up and down with her small son in her arms, said: ‘Mrs Barton, I wanted to ask you if—’ But Winter had passed her without hearing her and had gone into the house and up the long narrow flight of stairs. She drew the muslin veil over her head and across her face as Ameera and the other women did on the rare occasions on which they moved outside the women’s quarters, and passed along a narrow enclosed verandah and up the final flight of stairs that led to the roof where Alex lay.
The moonlight and the last touch of twilight made the open roof seem very bright after the dark passages and stairways, and the rain had cooled it so that it smelt pleasantly of washed stone.
Alex’s bed had been dragged out into the open, presumably by Dr O’Dwyer. He was lying on it with his back to her, wearing only the scanty cotton loin-cloth that alone made the heat of the day bearable, and his body looked painfully thin and very brown against the pale-coloured resai that did duty as a mattress. He heard the chink of Winter’s jewellery but he did not turn, and she came to stand beside him, looking down at him and wondering if he were asleep. After a moment or two, as she did not speak, he said ungraciously: ‘Well, what is it?’
The irritation in his voice gave her a sudden qualm, and for a moment her resolution faltered. Her hands gripped together tightly and
she took a deep breath and forced herself to speak calmly:
‘Alex, will you marry me?’
Alex did not move for an appreciable time, and then he turned slowly and looked up at her. It seemed to him that there was a tight band made of some hot metal round his forehead, and he could not think at all clearly.
‘What did you say?’
‘I asked you if you would marry me,’ said Winter steadily.
‘Why?’
She sat down on the edge of the low bed and as she did so the muslin veil slipped back and off her shoulders, and the clear moonlight showed red marks on her throat. The hand she raised to catch at the veil was bruised too about the wrist with the plain prints of the brutal grip that had held it.
Alex reached out and caught her hand, holding it with thin hot fingers, and looked at those marks; and Winter, noticing them for the first time, jerked it quickly away.
Alex said thickly: ‘Carlyon?’
‘Yes. No. I mean - it doesn’t matter.’
He sat up and found that it tightened the band about his head by several notches. It should surely be impossible to feel so ill and so angry at one and the same time? Separately perhaps, but not together. He said: ‘Yes, I’ll marry you. And what’s more, I’ll do it now. Go and tell Dobbie I want to see him. And wait a minute - give me some of that opium—’
Winter never knew what he had said to Mr Dobbie, but whatever it was it appeared to have persuaded Mr Dobbie to accede to the unexpected request for an immediate marriage. Lou knew, because Lou had come in search of Winter and had heard a murmur of voices from the roof. She had almost reached the top of the stairs when she had heard Alex say: ‘Very well, then, I’ll have her without. And you can take that on your conscience! It won’t be on mine.’