“Very well, Hugh. I’ll overlook the threat, which does you no credit at all. If a twenty-four-year old buck who’s been trained to kill and maim can’t ‘tear the bloody head off’ a soft-bodied, middle-aged businessman, he should be shot for incompetence. I wish you no harm but I no longer feel you’d make a satisfactory partner. I’ll compromise. I’ll make you a free gift of all the advice and information I’ve given you and I’ll pay the cost of the country boats as far up-river as you can get before the monsoon holds you up. I’ll do that, because it’s in my interests that you succeed in setting up a business in Zafarala: you’ll be my agent. But you’ll be on your own, an independent merchant. You’ll stand or fall on your own account. As for the consignment of goods, I’ll sell you those on credit. You can have a year in which to pay me. I don’t think I can be fairer than that.”
“I accept.”
Ramsey held out his hand and MacLean shook it firmly; but briefly, as though anxious to reject the contact.
“And I hope you’ll stay on as my guest for the next two days. There’s no need to feel embarrassed. You’re still very green and we’ve still lots to talk about.” MacLean gave him a wry smile. “Besides, I have my own sort of pride too: I wouldn’t want it to be thought around the town that I’d shown you the door because of what may happen concerning poor Pocock. And I know my wife would never forgive me if I did. We merchants have a code too, as well as you officers and gentlemen.”
“Don’t rub it in, Angus. I’m feeling pretty humble and... shabby, as it is.”
Pocock did not die. By the next evening his doctors confidently announced that he was not going to.
On the following morning, at sunrise, Ramsey, Sher Mahommed Khan and Karim Baksh set sail in a large country boat, a 60-foot scow, 18 ft in the beam, with part of the cargo. The remainder accompanied them aboard a smaller vessel.
It was not the kind of start on his search for riches for which Ramsey had hoped. Instead of setting out in the security of a partnership with MacLean and supported by abundant funds, he was alone and already in debt. On his Army pay it would have taken more than 10 years to pay it off.
When they arrived at Barrackpore he could not keep his eyes away from the bank. The sound of troops drilling on the square drifted clearly to his ears: the stamp of booted feet, the bellowed words of command, the crash of rifle butts, the rattle of bayonets, the jingle and hoof beat of cavalry. He saw lances gleaming in the distance and pennants fluttering. As they had always done, the sights and sounds caught at his throat and for a mad moment he had an urge to order the boatmen to tie up while he went ashore and hailed his old comrades, invited himself to lunch with the Veritys, basked in the affection of his sepoys. Instead he strained his ears until the last sound had died away and then fell to contemplation.
He reflected on the events of the week and found too fluent a development, too facile an association between one and the next. From his first evening and his caustic, if brief, altercation with Pocock, there had been a series of apparently fortuitous misfortunes and ignominies which had ended by reversing what had seemed a fortunate and promising beginning. The result had left him ousted from a potential partnership and heavily indebted. It was difficult to believe that there had not been a preconceived design in it all, that he was not the victim of a subtly scheming malevolence, who had been made a considerable fool of. He began to simmer with anger at what he had begun to suspect was duplicity and at his own folly.
A journey of many weeks lay ahead of him, through country where there were few roads and those were rough. There were rivers to travel and cross and the monsoon floods were coming. Dacoits and Thag, (called Thugs by the British) who strangled and plundered travellers, roamed in bands.
Before he could begin to earn the money he owed MacLean he had to reach his destination with life, limb and cargo intact. He had to make enough to repay the man on whom he now looked with suspicion, in a year.
And he had to do it in a strange and, by all accounts, dangerous and turbulent place where nothing was certain, a despotic ruler exercised total power and his fortunes and his life would be forfeit to the Nawab’s insane whims.
Chapter Six
This was the indolent, feckless East, not the energetic, driving West. Emphatically it was not the vigorous, ebullient United States of America. Despite the pioneering spirit of the British, French, Dutch and Portuguese who had been trading and colonising here for three centuries, India was the antithesis of the American West.
It needed all Henry Whittaker’s dynamic imposition of authority to organise his family’s departure by the date on which he had determined.
In the meanwhile Mukerji Babu attended daily at the hotel to give the three of them a two-hour lesson in Hindustani.
Ruth mimicked him and set her mother chortling. They both found it hard not to laugh in his presence.
“Now ve vill ishtudy the interrogative, isn’t it. In the bharnacular we are not altering order of words, we are changing emphasis, isn’t it. In such way, ‘Kahan ap jate hain?’ means ‘Where you are going?’”
“He’s a nice little man, Ruth. So earnest.”
“Yes-yes, Mother, so earnest, isn’t it.”
They were all three apt pupils and the Munshi, with much head-waggling and gesticulation — the fingertips and thumb of each hand bunched together in the peculiar Indian fashion — praised them.
He also pressed upon them a booklet of philosophy, printed on the cheapest kind of paper, written by him in Urdu and published at his own expense for sale at three annas.
“This will encourage you to learn the Urdu alphabet, isn’t it. My book is called ‘Khayalat Zarin’, ‘Beautiful Thots’.”
Ruth devoutly hoped she would have some beautiful thoughts about India some day. She thought it improbable.
*
They took to the road soon after dawn. Whittaker had been a horseman from the age of four or five. Constance had been a prize pupil at the riding school in Worcester, Massachusetts in her girlhood. Ruth, in her turn, had shone at Professor Pratolini’s Equestrian Academy in Boston. Both the ladies had preferred riding to driving in a prairie schooner during their years in the wild West.
They had their own saddlery. There was nothing exceptional about the two side-saddles, but Whittaker’s high-pommelled and cantled Western saddle and his wide-brimmed hat had never been seen before in that part of the world.
Three horse-drawn carts followed them, each with a reserve pair of horses hitched astern. The three grooms drove them. Mukerji Babu, the Munshi, sat beside the driver of the leading cart, rolling fatly from side to side with its motion. The shaft of a vast umbrella rested on his shoulder to protect him from both sun and rain. Husain Ahmed, the bearer, in spotless long white coat and pantaloons, was in the second one. In the third was Bishen, the cook. A villainous-looking low-caste Hindu wearing a monstrous turban and holding a tall, thick staff, sat on its tail-board: he was the chaukidar, who would sleep most of the day.
It rained that night. Ruth lay awake. Discordant thoughts fomented. Anguish and yearning occupied the foremost place in her mind. She could identify the yearning as homesickness, despite the protective tenderness of her parents. The reason for the anguish she could not determine. She reasoned that it probably had its origin in the loneliness she felt. For more than five months she had lacked the company of young people and now she found this strange country oppressive and it increased her feeling of isolation. It was disorienting to be surrounded by dark faces, by dark emaciated bodies clad mostly in rags, by dark naked children with hugely protuberant bellies distended by diseased spleens. This was an intimidating country in a way in which the Western plains and overpowering vastness of the mountains had never been. Yet she was moved by curiosity, a reluctantly admitted fascination the logic of which eluded her. To that extent, she told herself, she was her father’s daughter, a romantic, attracted by the mystical. She was also, however, her mother’s mirror image in more than the shape of her face,
her colouring, her mouth and eyes. They shared a scepticism and pragmatism. She could regard this characteristic objectively, whereas in her mother it was so dominant a part of her nature that it was unconscious.
She smiled in the darkness, thinking of her parents. Her father would be hurt and astonished if he knew how resentment sometimes welled up in her for the selfishness of which he was unaware. Her mother perhaps acknowledged it in her thoughts, but if she did it would at once be vindicated by the principle that a wife’s duty was to her husband. Her mother would be equally amazed and slighted if she knew that her daughter often thought her inconsiderate and insensitive.
Her mother had married at 18. Yet she herself at 20 had never had a sweetheart. Occasional hasty kisses at a Boston ball or a prairie barn-dance were the extent of her amorous experience: physically pleasurable, prompted by curiosity, her affection never engaged. Despite her liking for adventure there were many other ways of life she would prefer to be following than this one: isolated from her friends, 12000 miles from home, gasping for air on a hard, narrow bed in the back of a cart in the sultry night, with a wolf howling close by and no further away a roar which could only come from the throat of a tiger; when she coveted the voice of a lover. More than his voice, his touch: whose, in this literally howling wilderness? Some stuffy Britisher’s? Heaven forbid. It was barely a generation since America had rid itself of them and she wasn’t about to embrace one of the breed.
*
Their two charpai had been pushed close together but the adjacent wooden sides made a hard ridge between their separate thin mattresses. In fact they lay on doubled-over quilts, an improvisation. The natives slept directly on the strings that ran lengthways and across the bed frames.
His hand reached out for her shoulder and slid down her arm. She took it in hers and pressed it against her. He moved closer to her, supporting himself on one elbow. The frame of his charpai was uncomfortable. He shifted partly onto her bed.
She chuckled quietly. “Until now, I never really believed what people said about the effect of a tropical climate. No wonder they have such large families out here.”
“Think one bed will stand the weight of both of us?”
She laughed again, her arms around him. “Maybe if we lie still... but I guess we won’t... so wait and see.”
“Constance... are you really going to be all right? I mean, you aren’t sorry we came all this way from home?”
“Sorry? When it does this to you, Henry dear? But don’t let’s talk about it now... don’t let’s talk at all.”
He felt happy and secure, holding her and held firmly by her. All his confidence, which sometimes he admitted to himself was built on insecure foundations, returned when they were together like this. His reputation and the bank’s money were at risk. But they had needed to leave sad memories far behind. A threatening unknown world lay outside in the crowding darkness but here all was familiar and comforting. They heard the wolf in the nearby jungle, they heard the rumble of the prowling tiger. They heard the night watchman’s rasping artificial cough where he sat by the fire with his stave across his knees. He had been coughing at intervals since they came to bed, to let them know he was conscientiously awake.
Constance moaned. He released pent-up breath in a long sigh.
“My God! It’s like being struck by lightning, isn’t it.”
She kissed him, then began to giggle, no dignity now. “Darling, don’t say ‘isn’t it’ any more... it destroys me.”
He laughed with her. Their whole life together had been fun, despite the dangers and the tragedies. They would need all their sense of humour to see them through the coming months... years perhaps. He was glad Ruth had a good sense of humour too. This new venture was hardest of all on her. He hoped she would find friends in Nekshahr. He felt a trifle guilty about her.
“Constance, d’you think Ruth’s all right?”
“Ruth’s just fine, Henry. Now you just lie quiet a while and we’ll...” she whispered in his ear “...one more time.”
Later, much later, on the brink of sleep she stirred against him and murmured. “Tomorrow tell that chaukider he doesn’t have to cough all night... Henry, if we can hear him, can he hear these pesky beds creaking? And Ruth...”
“Who cares? If you’d seen the carvings in that temple I was taken to see yesterday, you’d know nothing can shock these people.”
“I was thinking of my embarrassment tomorrow... and of Ruth hearing...”
“You’d better get used to it: I aim to cause you a lot more embarrassment before we finish this trip. And Ruth knows more about life than you may think, after three years out West... you don’t suppose she thought the fellows used to go visiting the saloon girls to have their palms read, do you?”
“Henry Whittaker, sometimes I find it very hard to believe you’re the same respectable banker I married.”
“There’s a difference between being respectable and being narrow-minded, Constance. And travel broadens the mind. Now go to sleep... or, if you’re so talkative, I declare I’ll set your charpoy creaking all over again...”
“Now that’s the best sense I’ve heard from you since we set foot in this benighted land.”
His cheek was touching hers and she felt him smile in the darkness.
“Showing off, I am afraid, my dear. Now let’s both go to sleep. We have an early start tomorrow and we’re out of practice at riding the trail.”
She fell asleep reminding herself that it was pointless to be as protective as she tended to be about her daughter’s innocence. After what Ruth had seen under the pipal tree on the day after their arrival in Bombay, there was really nothing left to conceal from her. Of the two, she herself had been the more shocked, she admitted. And Heaven alone knew what other startling and horrid sights awaited them on this journey and when they arrived at Nekshahr.
She never had been able to resist Henry’s blandishments, his persuasiveness. Even so, and although she had perfect faith in his judgment, she would never have agreed to this long journey had it not been for the sad memories of her two sons. Henry, Ruth and she all needed time, and time spent far away from all reminder of the boys, to get over the tragedy of their deaths.
From what she had seen of India so far, she was never going to like it, let alone be happy here. But she must never betray her feelings. That would make it even harder for Henry and for Ruth.
*
The first two weeks afloat gave Ramsey abundant new interests. He felt that it would be easy to let himself be seduced into this idle, tranquil way of life for the rest of his days. This new environment of water was at once a world apart yet an essential integral part of the whole nation’s spirit. He watched and asked questions about every aspect of boat-handling: the set of the sails, the steering, the avoidance of sandbanks, the choice of water through which to make the swiftest passage; sometimes close to the bank, at others far out in the stream. He studied the variety of boats to which almost every day added something new. He studied the birds and when they were too far for the naked eye he watched them through his telescope: a great wonder to the inland sailors. He had never imagined that there were so many riparian species and although the crew told him the vernacular names for most of them he was dissatisfied and wished he had a book on ornithology. He fished and sometimes he went ashore with a gun to shoot for the pot or simply to walk briskly for exercise: used to marching several miles a day, if only about the parade ground, inactivity was irksome as well as unhealthy.
It was 800 miles to Allahabad and the voyage took an average of 75 days for most Europeans, who usually preferred a ketch-rigged pinnace with several smaller craft in company for their servants, baggage and cooking. Ramsey could not spare so much time. In four or five weeks the monsoon would break and he wanted to be within two weeks of his river journey’s end by then so that he could complete it, even though in heavy rain, before the floods took hold. For this reason they seldom put ashore and when they did so it was never for more t
han an hour. They replenished their water supply, bought meat, vegetables and fruit, Ramsey went shooting or walking, then they hurried on again by night as well as day.
A short way upstream from Calcutta the Hooghly changed its name to Ganges, but there was nothing to mark the transition. The brown water was the same, the burning ghats on both banks were the same, with the same columns of smoke rising from the funeral pyres and the same odours of burning wood and charred flesh borne across the water on the shifting winds.
They could have made the whole river journey without ever going ashore. Small boats came out every day to sell them food and water; and women. The supply of women was ubiquitous. A male passenger being ferried across a river, if only a matter of half an hour, would be offered one to keep him pleasantly occupied. Girls were brought alongside to clamber aboard for the delectation of sailors or passengers separated from their wives and concubines. Ramsey was finding celibacy a burden but dignity and prudence equally prevailed on him to suffer rather than succumb to temptation. And on occasions it was strong, when some pretty 16-year-old widow who had no choice between starvation and this profession which was not regarded with contempt or shame, made eyes at him. It was only when he saw children of twelve or fourteen years being taken aboard that, as always, he felt angry and sickened. But they were widows too, remarriage was forbidden them and the alternative was shaven-headed drudgery for their husbands’ families. Some had even married so young that their husbands had died before the bride grew old enough for consummation to be permissible.
After the third week, with the men plying the long, heavy oars all day and all night when the wind was light or there was none at all, novelty and new interests began to wear thin. The creak of cordage, the slap of canvas and the grating of oars against their tholes ceased to be an agreeable soporific and became a nagging reminder that time was slipping by and they had hundreds of miles still to go by both water and land.
A Good Soldier Page 11