Belonging

by Umi Sinha

  This evening Kishan Lal urged me to speak to him, so I went to his room. His eyes were red and I could tell he had been drinking, but to my surprise he got up, washed his face and came to the dinner table. Afterwards we sat out on the verandah listening to the rain rattling on the corrugated roof. I had given up any thought of conversation so was surprised when he picked up his narrative without prompting.

  He told me how, as he lay ill, his sepoys had brought him news about the massacre at the boats where Nana Saheb, having accepted Wheeler’s surrender and promised the garrison safe passage to Allahabad, had ordered his troops to open fire on them at the river. One of his sepoys later told him that he had tried to rescue my mother but she fought him off, perhaps fearing he was trying to abduct her. Later, Father learnt that some of the women and children had survived and been taken captive, but he had no way of knowing if my mother or Sophie were among them. Desperate to do something, he had pleaded with his sepoys to take him to join the rescue column, but they had heard that the men under the new command of Brigadier General Neill were hanging every native they could lay hands on, regardless of guilt or innocence, and they refused. Finally he had persuaded them to carry him in a palanquin to the road down which the column was approaching and to leave him there to be discovered.

  ‘I have never seen an army in such a state, Henry. The rain was unrelenting – ’ he glanced out at the drenched garden ‘ – much as it has been today – and the tents being carried on bullock carts had swelled and become so heavy that the bullocks died of exhaustion. The column was forced to abandon all its supplies, the soldiers eating only what they could carry and sleeping out in the rain. They were filthy and exhausted, but when they heard that the women were still alive every man of them expressed their willingness to fight to the death to save them.

  ‘Nana Saheb’s forces came out from Cawnpore to meet us. Both sides fought with courage and skill – loath as I am to admit it, his general, Tatya Tope, was magnificent, but our men fought like tigers. The battle lasted for three days until eventually the enemy was defeated. Then our men collapsed and slept where they fell. I was desperate to go into Cawnpore that same night but General Havelock would not allow it. He promised me that first thing in the morning he would despatch a detachment of Highlanders, led by Captain Ayrton, to the rescue and that I could accompany them. I could just about sit a horse by then, with the support of young Peter Markham, who by some strange chance was in the relief force. He had been my rival for your mother’s hand, and later became engaged to your Aunt Mina – his regiment had been transferred from Palestine to help put down the Mutiny. When he heard that I was alive he came to see me and we rode in together. He died a few weeks later, of the cholera, poor boy.’

  He paused for a long time then and I could tell he was gathering the strength to go on. I don’t think I shall ever forget his description of what followed next.

  As they rode into Cawnpore that morning, they saw a lot of subdued Indians standing with their heads bowed. Some came forward timidly to offer milk and sweetmeats, which some of the Highlanders accepted. Inside the city they were hailed by a man in shackles who turned out to be Jonah Shepherd, a Eurasian who had been in the entrenchment but had been sent out as a spy by General Wheeler. He had been captured by the mutineers and was now looking for his wife and daughters, whom he had last seen in the entrenchment. He offered to lead them to the house where he had been told the women were being kept.

  ‘Seeing what was left of Cawnpore through the eyes of the Highlanders was a shock. All the European bungalows had been burnt down, the church burnt out and despoiled. When I saw the entrenchment from the outside it seemed inconceivable that we could have survived there for so long. It was a mere furrow in the earth, surrounding the ruins of the two barracks – just heaps of rubble. We paused to look over the wall. Every yard of it was scarred with shot and shell and covered in broken bottles, old shoes and half-buried round shot. Everywhere vultures and crows were picking at the bones that still lay about in the open. I shall never forget the smell…’

  I felt suddenly hot. My breath shortened and that familiar feeling of suffocation came over me. ‘Father…’

  But he was beyond hearing me, caught in the grip of his inner vision. ‘We passed the ravine where my sepoys had sheltered after General Wheeler threw them out of the entrenchment and I pointed out to Ayrton the barracks where I had been wounded. And then we came to the river. The smell was worse… Soon after we came to a group of men who looked at us fearfully…’ He paused and took a deep breath. ‘A little further on we saw another group standing by the roadside in silence, and when they saw us they looked at us with sorrowful faces and silently pointed through some compound gates. The men all fell silent; I think we all knew then that we were too late.

  ‘As we passed through the gate the stench was heavier… the air seemed weighted with it. Part of me wanted to stop, but our horses just kept walking. It was like being in a dream. Just inside the gate was a great pile of women’s clothing and possessions… When Jonah Shepherd saw this he stopped and went back to the gate to wait. I wish now that I had done the same.’ He took a shuddering breath.

  ‘It’s all right, Father. I know what happened.’

  He shook his head. ‘I can still remember the flies – a great black cloud of them and the buzzing – and my feet sticking to the floor… And then I…’ He closed his eyes and for a moment I thought he was going to faint. Then he went on, ‘Peter must have helped me back to the gate. The officers came out – words were unnecessary – their ashen faces told the story. Shepherd, who was weeping, asked if they had found any bodies. They shook their heads. Then we heard a shout – some Highlanders who’d been exploring the garden. We followed them. There was a bloody trail through the bushes that led to a well…’ His head dropped.

  ‘Father!’ I stood up, filled his glass and pressed it into his hand. ‘Drink this.’

  He raised his head and took a long swallow. I had heard enough and wanted to stop him, but now that the festering wound was open he seemed to want to purge it completely. ‘I begged the Indians who were standing there to tell me if anyone had been spared. I told them my wife had been expecting a baby. Had they seen her? They were silent.

  ‘At the enquiry, witnesses said that they saw four men with swords enter the garden. Their leader was the lover of the woman who was guarding the prisoners. They were butchers by profession…’

  We sat in silence for a long time. Kishan Lal, coming through to trim the lamp wick, paused and stared, then looked at me and shook his head reproachfully. Father ignored him.

  ‘They were never buried, you know. Never even counted or identified. Sherer, the magistrate who later conducted the inquiry, arrived soon afterwards and ordered the well filled in. Havelock gave permission, to prevent the spread of disease.’

  ‘Then you can’t be sure?’

  He looked at me with those naked blue eyes. ‘Don’t you think I’ve hoped, Henry – hoped and prayed that by some miracle she might have been spared? I even consoled myself that she might have been abducted – some of the Eurasian women were, you know, General Wheeler’s daughter among them – and they might have mistaken her for one… She was dark, like you. I knew it was a fantasy, because she would have done anything to get back to you, but even the most absurd fairy story was preferable to imagining and dreaming, as I did every day and every night for years – and sometimes still do – what her end must have been.’ He raised his eyes to mine at last. ‘So now you know.’

  I had, of course, known the story already, but I had not known my mother was among the victims of the bibighar, and that made all the difference. I could understand now why he had never talked of it; how those pictures must have played through his mind over and over again as he imagined my mother’s fate. How had she died, in what terror and pain? Had she been one of the women thrown into the well alive to slowly suffocate under the bodies of her companions? In his guilt and shame, he had felt responsible,
and I could see that it had never occurred to him that I might feel myself to blame.

  ‘I still don’t understand how I survived.’

  ‘I was told that when we got back from the bibighar I collapsed and raved like a madman for two days. And then Peter came to me and said that a native had come forward with a baby and they thought it might be Cecily’s. I knew it was impossible, that no baby could have survived, but they brought the man to me.’ He raised his eyes to mine. ‘He told me he had heard that there was a sahib who was looking for a baby and that he had found you in a carpet bag he bought in the bazaar… a more likely explanation is that he had thieved it from that pile of possessions in the garden and was shocked to find a baby inside.’

  ‘Then you don’t actually know that I’m… that I’m your s…’ My throat closed on the word.

  ‘There’s no doubt at all in my mind, Henry… no doubt that you are my son, and hers. Apart from the fact that you look like your mother – you have her eyes and her smile – you were found in her carpet bag with some letters to her sister that she wrote while in the entrenchment, and you were wearing her lucky Sussex stone, which she placed around your neck. Do you still have it?’

  I reached into my shirt and pulled it out. My throat was tight with tears.

  ‘Henry, the last words she ever wrote were about you. She knew those butchers were coming to kill them and she hid you in the bag in the hope that you wouldn’t be found. It was lucky that you slept, but the darkness and airlessness in the bag must have helped, and even if you had woken they would never have heard your cry amidst all their screams. You were her gift to me, Henry, the most precious gift I’ve ever been given. When I held you in my arms I felt…’

  I knew I must not look at him or we would both weep. I cleared my throat. ‘Thank you for telling me, Father.’

  He waited until I looked up and his eyes met mine and held them. ‘I should have told you long ago. I’m sorry, Henry, but I couldn’t bring myself to speak of it.’

  I managed, past the lump in my throat, to stammer out, ‘I un-understand, Father.’

  ‘The truth is, I have spent years trying not to think of it, yet thinking of practically nothing else. The odd thing is, since I started telling you the story, the dreams have stopped. I’ve slept better in the last two nights than I have at any time since she died.’

  I did not add that he and I have talked more in the last week than in the entire rest of my life.

  15th July 1882

  Today is the anniversary of my mother’s death. Last night I had the old dream again. I woke in terror, as I often have before, to find the screams were mine. Father was shaking me by the shoulder. ‘Henry, wake up. Wake up. It’s all right, you’re safe.’

  He sat with me till the terror faded and I could go back to sleep. When I woke this morning, he had gone to the Lines.

  Tonight, without prompting, he told me what happened after the massacre: how everyone had seemed to lose their reason and sense of restraint. Soldiers, beside themselves with rage and guilt at not having got there in time, vowed to avenge themselves on any native they encountered; souvenirs from the bibighar were treasured; a Highlander had shown him a bloodstained handkerchief and said that, if he was ever tempted to trust a native again, he would look at it and it would remind him of his desire for revenge.

  ‘It was as though we were all possessed. Discipline went out of the window and Neill lost complete control of his “Lambs”, so called because they were devout Christians. They spent all their time drunk, rampaging through the town, killing and burning. And Havelock’s men – known as “The Saints” for their sobriety – joined in, until Havelock ordered all the liquor bought up. Indian women were ravished in the streets; children were burnt alive. Even the Sikhs joined in, shooting any Indian they saw. Poor Sherer was forced to issue notices for respectable citizens to affix to their doors, absolving them of any part in the Mutiny.

  ‘More and more extreme punishments were devised to frighten and humiliate the mutineers and to break down their defiance: beef or pork was forced into their mouths; they were smeared with cow’s blood or sewn into pigskins; Hindus were told they would be buried and Muslims burnt to ensure their eternal damnation. We even revived the old Mughal punishment of blowing men from cannons.

  ‘It seemed to me that we had all died and gone to hell – a hell like in one of Bosch’s paintings… Caught up in an ecstasy of wickedness. General Neill – a man who prided himself on his Christian faith – came up with a punishment the Inquisition would have been proud of. Every condemned mutineer was to be made to clean up a portion of the bibighar – with his tongue! We thought we were superior… that we were civilised, because we could control our impulses and they couldn’t. When I think of our behaviour I shudder with shame. But who am I to judge, after what I did?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He paused, struggling to find the words. ‘I myself betrayed someone… a man far better than I shall ever be. His name was Ram… Ram Buksh. He was a jemadar in my regiment and had shown me nothing but loyalty… he saved my life at the risk of his own during the first Sikh campaign, when he was just a boy. I took him under my wing and we became friends… In the second campaign he did so well that I promoted him. That created some resentment, because promotion in the Indian Army is, as you know, usually by seniority. But he was an exceptional soldier with a fine intellect. I have never found another companion with whom I shared so much.’

  I waited for him to go on.

  ‘I knew your mother liked him. He had taught her Hindustani and used to ride with her when I was recuperating from an attack of malaria. He was one of the few native officers whom Wheeler allowed to remain in the entrenchment. After I was wounded, he protected and cared for her. When Wheeler surrendered the entrenchment he was captured by Nana Saheb and sentenced to have his hands cut off, but the sentence was never carried out. Afterwards he was brought before a temporary magistrate – some boxwallah who had been appointed to judge the natives’ guilt or innocence. To most of them – and he was no exception – the only evidence of guilt required was a brown face. Ram Buksh told him that I would vouch for his loyalty, so the magistrate reluctantly brought him to me. At that time I was still weak from my wounds and half-crazed with grief.’

  I noticed his scar had tightened and his right eye was twitching. ‘Henry, I can’t begin to explain the frame of mind I was in. I was beside myself with grief and anger – anger with myself and with him for failing to save her. And I was jealous. We’d had our problems, and he was young and strong and handsome – in the letters she left behind she’d talked of being closer to him than anyone else on earth. It was all perfectly innocent, of course – I knew that later, when I reread her account and realised that nothing had really happened – but that was later.’ He was silent, absent, his eyes haunted.

  At last I said, ‘Father, what is it that you blame yourself for?’

  He sighed. ‘When they brought him before me he wept with joy to see me alive and tried to touch my feet. And I… I pushed him away and demanded to know what he had done with her. He must have thought I meant he hadn’t done enough to save her, because he wept and begged me to forgive him, and of course that confirmed my suspicions. The magistrate, an impatient man with no brief for natives, asked me whether I would vouch for him or no, and I said – ’ he closed his eyes ‘ – I said that I could not vouch for his actions after I left the entrenchment, as I had no knowledge of them.’ He paused and cleared his throat. ‘When he heard me say that, his face changed. He got to his feet and did not look at me again. I told the magistrate to speak to Lt. Thomson, who had been in the entrenchment for the whole time and would know more than I.’

  His eyes met mine over the rim of the glass. ‘Henry, I swear I thought Thomson would bear out Ram Buksh’s story and that they would release him. But Thomson was supervising the building of the new fortifications outside Cawnpore and was not available. I was told later that the magistrate asked i
f Ram Buksh wanted an adjournment so they could call Thomson as a witness. He replied that if his senior officer, under whom he had served for eighteen years, would not vouch for his loyalty, he had no further defence to offer. I should have remembered how proud he was. The officiating officer told me he was taken to the bibighar first, to carry out Neill’s penance… but when he saw the room he wept so bitterly that the officer excused him the punishment. He was hanged that same afternoon.’

  He paused, as though waiting for me to say something, but I could think of nothing. The memory came back to me of that night after the chaplain’s dinner – Father standing on his verandah, crucified against the moonlight, crying ‘Ram! Ram!’ into the darkness.

  His shoulders dropped and suddenly he looked old.

  ‘But that wasn’t all. When Wheeler refused to let my sepoys enter the entrenchment I had given them each a letter vouching for their loyalty. After Ram Buksh was hanged, a group of them, including my subhedar-major, a man called Durga Prasad – the best and most loyal officer who could be imagined – were summoned before the court. They produced the letters and their cases were dismissed, but as they left the court a group of English soldiers standing at the gate bayoneted them all.’

  ‘That, at least, wasn’t your fault, Father.’

  ‘I should have been there, Henry. They had given up everything for me and I owed it to them. If I had been there I might have stopped it. But the truth is I was too caught up in my own grief to care. I suppose if I’m honest I wanted revenge too… I’ll never forget the sight of James, cradling poor dead little Freddie in his arms…’

  I looked away as he struggled for composure. ‘I don’t understand why you stayed on. I’d have thought you’d have wanted to get away, go home.’

  He laughed. ‘I have no home, Henry. I’ve lived in India since I was twenty. My parents died when I was a child. James and his family were my last remaining relatives. I stopped believing in our mission here long ago, but the army and my sepoys are the closest thing I’ve had to a family. And you, of course.’