The Mulberry Empire

by Philip Hensher

  The Governor General and his immediate circle are in sombre, undemonstrative black. Around them, a sea of glittering body-servants and mahouts surge and swell. They pay no attention to their servants. Burnes, abandoned, is acutely self-conscious, with nothing to do, and abruptly feels embarrassed. The Eden sisters are watching him, from beneath their parasols planted in the earth, with some interest.

  6.

  ‘What news of the Queen?’ Fanny says suddenly. ‘How pretty she must be, and what a very romantic notion, a little Queen of just nineteen. It is difficult to conceive of anything which would more quickly destroy a girl’s notion of modesty and good sense than being hailed as the ruler of so great an empire. She must have her head turned, very quickly.’

  ‘I wonder about that,’ Burnes says, turning and smiling. ‘They say that if she is ever to dance, a gentleman of the household is sent to intimate to a sacrificial victim that his invitation would be graciously received by Her Majesty, and he is led forward, quaking with terror, like a lamb to the altar.’

  Emily rearranges herself on the cushion, squishing her bottom around, and laughs, heartily. ‘Exactly how matters ought to be arranged for the whole of humanity. In my youth, how I would have loved to have sent my papa forward with his tremendous august majesty, to tell the finest young man in the room that his invitation to dance would not be taken amiss. How very rational a way of arranging matters that would be, rather than what actually happened, which is that I stood simpering for hours in the corner with the other great girls, pretending to admire the flowers all through the cotillion, and burning all the while with shame.’

  ‘Nonsense, Emily,’ Fanny says, accepting a glass of sherry and a hard biscuit from a tray carried by one of the bearers. Still, nobody is touching the cold food laid out with such lavishness; the whole party is circling and waiting for Auckland’s attention, or his hunger, to be attracted. ‘You never lacked for partners. And as you would arrange it, it would be the gentlemen who stood around admiring the flowers and waiting for your gracious invitation, which would be no very great improvement.’

  ‘I have never met a gentleman who could simper with conviction, it is true,’ Burnes says.

  ‘You have been lucky not to spend time with our friend Elphinstone, then,’ Emily murmurs. ‘But I worry for the poor dear Queen. If asking a gentleman to dance at a ball presents so very awkward a situation, how is she ever to marry? What gentleman would dare to ask so very personal a question? Is she to despatch Palmerston to indicate that a proposal of an intimate nature would meet the Queen’s favour, or is she planning to make the first move herself? One can see how Queen Elizabeth remained unmarried all her life – no one would have dared say a word, and the poor woman never thought of proposing herself. Do you know, I wonder where on earth my poor Pug can have got himself to?’

  Burnes laughs, and changes the subject. ‘You must, I suppose, have met the great mass of Englishmen in India, Miss Eden.’

  ‘It certainly feels like it.’

  ‘I wonder if you know anything of a gentleman whom I used to know. I should very much like to have some news of Gerard,’ Burnes says. ‘He was my travelling companion to Kabul, you know, and since I have arrived in India, I have had no word of him. I should very much like to know what became of him.’

  ‘Ah,’ Emily says. ‘Gerard. Yes, indeed, Gerard the doctor, poor man.’

  ‘Poor man, indeed,’ Burnes says, smiling.

  ‘The last time I saw him,’ Emily says, ‘I played quite a trick on him. Truly, now, I am ashamed. A merchant in the bazaar, one of our merchants, you know, a box-wallah, had the idea of a raffle for goods. A splendid idea, but quite out of fashion in London, I expect. You must forgive our poor notions, in this remote and dim country. Well, in truth, it proved as unfashionable an enterprise in Calcutta as it ever could have done in London. Not one ticket was sold. I forget, precisely, what the goods were – Fanny, my dear, do you remember? – no – I recall – a handsome set, a handsome dinner set, quite out of the ordinary run of things in this country. After that, I forget. Perhaps a pier glass, but I am certain that they were very handsome things, so I know not why the public took against the notion so. In any case, it came to the attention of Dr Gerard, who was a very careful man, as well as being, as you must know, highly contrary, that only one ticket had been sold for these splendid goods, and, although he had no desire for any of the goods, he saw that a modest outlay would acquire these fine things to a certainty.

  ‘Now, at that time he was a regular attender at Governor’s house, since one of the ladies there was in an interesting condition, and he confided the state of things to her, who confided them in turn to my sister Fanny and to me. We have, you know, some devilry in us, and without telling anyone else, we bought four tickets to the raffle – 20l. in all – and sat back to wait for the result. Dr Gerard was certain that his was the only ticket that had been sold, so imagine his horror when the day of the raffle came, and our tickets carried off the first three lots, and he was left with nothing, having spent 151. He was good enough to forgive us, even when it became clear that we did not desire the prizes in the slightest, and had given them all to our maids.’

  ‘Not the dinner set,’ Fanny says.

  ‘No, not the dinner set, that is true,’ Emily says. ‘We kept that, although I cannot remember that we have ever used it.’

  ‘Poor Dr Gerard,’ Burnes says. ‘And he so very argumentative. Do you know, madam, where he is at present? Still in India, I hope?’

  Emily looks up in astonishment. ‘Dr Gerard? Why, sir – he is dead. Did you not know? I thought that was your purpose in asking. Dead six months back, of the cholera. That was my reason in expressing my guilt at our poor treatment of the man – that was the last occasion on which we had any sight of him. It was a quick case, in the end. But many come to such ends, here, and with so old a man, with no connections, there could be few to mourn him, or talk of him afterwards. He went with you to Kabul, you say, sir? I did not know that.’

  ‘He was not an old man,’ Burnes says, shocked out of politeness.

  Emily looks surprised at Burnes’s bluntness. ‘No – perhaps not so very old a man. Tell me – do you know what the Governor General can find so very pressing a matter to discuss that he cannot send to inquire after the health and comfort of his two poor patient sisters?’

  Burnes bows, and walks away, ostensibly to discover what the Governor General is talking about, but in reality to stop talking to the Eden sisters. The tents are up, now, and he walks between them to the edge of the camp. The dust the procession raised is still hanging heavily in the air, and only slowly subsiding. He looks at the greasy blanketing sky. All at once, it seems to him not like a black Indian sky, but almost an English one. If it were not so very hot, the sky might seem nothing more than an oppressive sky over Gloucestershire, with its dense drifting black patches, and, beyond, thinning paler grey. An English sky, transported halfway across the world. It is only the earth which is different. All at once, he misses Bella; misses her very much indeed. What skies she is under, he does not know, and never will.

  TEN

  AT THIS POINT, the scholarly reader will be wondering what, exactly, was going on, and what, precisely, lay behind the forthcoming meeting of pretenders to the throne of Kabul. The relevant correspondence may be found in the library of the India Office, I expect. Not, however, wishing to overestimate the reader’s curiosity or energy, it is fair to describe the flurry of correspondence which had been taking place in the previous year or so. What the point of all the correspondence was between people who, on the whole, lived within the same square mile of London and who saw each other every day is a question we do not pretend to be able to answer. But it took place, and may be consulted by the reader of investigative temperament. So, back to London.

  It will be recalled that Lord Auckland’s brother-in-law was Barling, the President of the Board of Control. Whether he was inspired by the lessons the Duchesse de Neaud drew fro
m Burnes’s book, or not, he took it upon himself to write to Carling, that influential cousin-german of the Prime Minister, and point out that the region now known as Central Asia was taking up some £3.5 million of British exports, and it was worth considering a more forward policy towards Afghanistan. Unknown to him, Darling was simultaneously writing to Farling, to express his view that the region was of such potential importance to the nation – indeed, he understood that already it bought up to £3.5 million of British goods annually – that it would be best to resist the siren voices and adopt a position of masterly inactivity. Garling, who had actually read Mr Burnes’s book, was strongly of the view that the Amir’s strongly expressed hostility towards the King of the Punjab, a useful ally of the English, made him a dangerous and unsuitable ruler of a substantial kingdom, and that the only wise policy would be to replace him, if necessary by a show of force; a view which Harling read, agreed with (which was the reason Garling had decided to write to the President of the Board of Trade in the first place) and repeated in Cabinet. This was not the view of Marling, who, in a strongly-worded letter to Carling, argued that the division and hostility between the rulers of Kabul and the Punjab was a useful stalemate, and that peace in the region could best be maintained by sitting back and watching them snipe at each other ineffectively. Farling then set pen to paper, to express his own view – but no purpose would be served by summarizing any such debate, and it may be consulted in the archives. Suffice to say that the reasons to intervene, and not to intervene, were conveyed with the greatest possible appearance of sincerity and conviction to Palmerston and Melbourne, who listened courteously before putting their heads together, having been convinced of nothing more than that they had been presented with a decision which ought to be made.

  A decision was made by Cabinet with all due solemnity, and a letter of considerable seriousness was despatched to Calcutta. Five months later, the letter was received by Calcutta, and its contents read with great interest by the Governor General, and its recommendations for the conduct of the meeting between the Governor General, Shah Shujah and Runjeet Singh duly noted, but it is only fair to point out that the meeting on which London’s views were so strenuously expressed had occurred some two months previously, so there is not a great deal of point in saying what the letter actually contained, or in pursuing the necessarily leisurely correspondence further.

  ELEVEN

  1.

  HE WAS NOT MUCH OF A SOLDIER, and now he knew he never would be. Once, perhaps, he had imagined that India would be the making of him. In England, he had considered the famous careers of all those who had left disgrace behind at home, and gone to India. In a Surrey regiment those heroes had not seemed remarkable, but India had been the making of them; rogues became adventurers, and a disappointing or deplorable man had seemed quite different under a sultry sun. There were dozens of stories like that, all luring boys from a sense of their own failure. Ten years in the East would do it. He had envisaged himself, returning, rich and hard and unsmiling, a man with the saturnine expression of one with diamonds in his inner pockets, whose laconic conversation would reveal nothing of the secret of how it was that such a man had been made in India. The certainty in him, for the months before his departure, was that in the service of the Company, he would acquire riches and character. He set off from Yorkshire, and, as he set out westward on the York mailcoach, sitting on the roof and clutching his hat in the January wind, he was all too conscious that he was still a boy. But he knew fervently that he would return quite changed, or die first. How riches and character would be obtained, he did not know precisely. In England it was always said that money went to money. There, to become rich, you had to be rich first; and to acquire strength of character one, no doubt, had to have some strength of character in the first place. That was England, however. In India, he would leave the boy he had been behind. He had suffered under the knowledge that he had been until now, someone who had always followed his elder sisters’ suggestions, who would not go to the woods at night. They were so black, and something might be there, or nothing apart from him. He would not go to the woods at night. He cried at hunting and would not be blooded, he flinched to shoot a magpie, he felt himself humiliated and ridiculed when his mother asked him to hold up his hands, that she might better wind her yarn. India would be the solution to all that.

  Today, he was not quite so sure. He had been in the Company’s regiments for three years, and had no more acquired strength of character than riches. He could perceive it in others, and those who shone on the parade ground were as immediately obvious to him as the riches of a potentate whose robes bubbled with diamonds. And he could see, too, those who, like him, would never be rich or brave. There was no country in the world which could transform someone like him.

  The day had been worse than usual. At inspection, the barrel of his musket had been dirty. ‘Digging for potatoes, again, soldier?’ the inspecting officer had bawled, his face inches away. ‘Digging for potatoes and too hungry to find a spade? Clean it.’ He had cleaned it, squatting on the ground, and an hour later presented himself, alone, for inspection. The officer was bored and irritable at being called away from his snipe and claret, and took a cursory glance before ordering him to clean it again. He was sure that it was clean, but a careful look in the failing light showed that the officer was right, he had not done the job thoroughly, even now. He was sunk in misery, and the others left him alone, away from the fire. If he could clean his musket, and always have it clean from now on, he felt, then everything else would follow. In the middle of his shame, a feeling of promise emerged. If he could prove himself, in one small thing after another, then he would start to get better, and in a year, in two years, he too would be a brave good soldier. Bravery came not from the single heroic deed, but from a sense of your own duty in the smallest things. He would clean his boots, and clean his musket, and obey orders smartly and correctly, and in five years’ time he would return, rich and fascinating as any Mogul. This, now, he would get right, and his life would be told and retold like the life of a saint.

  It was proving difficult, however. Night had fallen, and as he peered into the barrel of the gun, he could no longer see the old dirt which must be lodged there. The others were around the unnecessary but habitual fire, swapping old stories and abusing their officers. He was sure they were laughing, too, at him, the disaster of the platoon, and would not draw near. They were yawning, and would soon be turning in after another long dusty day. In any of the others, this kind of punishment would call out some kind of sympathy. If the officer required him to clean the weapon again and again, however, he was sure that his fellows would see it impatiently. He was someone who would always hold the others back.

  He got up quietly, unobserved, and slipped off. Behind the tents, there was a group of native bearers squatting equably around a little fire of their own, but he could not and would not join them. There were no lamps nearby, just the big hot Indian night, howling, silently. Then he had a good idea, and sat down in pitch darkness, unobserved. He fumbled for his flint. Here, quietly, he would make a light and see for himself what, by now, he was sure of, that his musket was unquestionably clean. In the silent dark of this corner of the camp, he lit a splint and peered down the barrel, sure that this time, at least, he would display himself as a fellow with the makings of a good, conscientious member of the platoon.

  2.

  The most stupendous day in the history of the world opened in rather a leisurely fashion, like the adagio prelude to a furious overture. By the end of the day, the fate of the world would be decided; it began, like any other, with everyone waking and groaning and pulling the fragments of their consciousness together from wherever they had fallen in the course of the night. The rains had broken while the Governor’s camp slept, but it brought no relief. Rather, it was as if a bucket of soup had been dropped over the entire plain, and what had been unbearably hot began to steam. They woke at six, as usual, to a landscape already steaming; the
nightclothes and sheets stuck together. And towards them, in august fury, rode the two supplicant princes with their glittering storming entourages, like beasts of the field enveloped by a cloud of insects; rode through the night towards the Governor’s camp from their diverse corners of the world, with all the splendour of princes who know that, this day, they will draw a line on the map, and divide the continent between them.

  Macnaghten woke with a jolt, and Elphinstone, three hundred yards away, woke at the same moment. They sat up in their different tents, with an identical jolt, at the same moment, like two puppets tied together with a long string. By them stood a different sardonic attendant, looking at his master drily, awaiting his master’s instructions. The two of them woke, simultaneously, as if plucked upwards by a single string, and spoke before either of them was quite awake. ‘No, not at all,’ Macnaghten said. ‘Quite, quite mistaken,’ Elphinstone said. They woke, and were already cross.

  Another hot sleepy day to fight your way through, Emily thought, and it was her first thought on waking. She was not shaken awake; there was no need. She woke, as ever, quite suddenly, with a feeling that she had cried out. By her bed there was already a little crowd, the girl with the tea and the girl to wash the Governor’s sister and Myra with her attendants, to dress her. Emily never woke with the illusion that she was anywhere but where she was; that cruel consolation had long before been taken from her. She would not have that back; there was nothing worse than those days when she was first in India, and had woken and for a moment believed herself in a Worcestershire bed, and that sensation of delicious heat nothing more than the promise of a delicious hot Worcestershire summer day. That cruel trick the mind played had gone now, and she was glad of it. Now she woke, and immediately knew what she had to face; a day of being dressed, and strapped, and sponged like a horse; a day of pepper flying in the soupy air, of mud and dirt, of gazing at muddy, dirty, tired complexions and never a fresh clean English face in the fresh clean English air; a day of being civil to princes, of accepting the tribute of a mound of jewels without seeming to notice, a mound of jewels one would happily have swapped for one crisp white English apple from a crisp cool English orchard; a day of feeling sticky at every point in the body when flesh touched flesh, of unpeeling one’s sticky limbs from each other where they touched; a day of having oil poured over your hair and face and dress in pretended compliment, and having to look grateful and pleased; a day of talking to the ladies of one prince’s court after another, and never an idea of who each of them was, and never an idea of what one was supposed to be talking to them about, since George would never let on what the true business of the day was until it was quite concluded; a day of facing a harem of ladies, all giggling quietly between their hands, and trying not to be put out of composure (and how would they like it if one started giggling at them?). A day of having to force down the most disgusting food, of sugary pastes covered in gritty silver paint and brown bitter meats boiled in a pot, a dish which would throw up more jointed legs than seemed altogether plausible in an animal, and having to be polite about it, and never be able to say, firmly, the thing she longed to say, ‘To eat such things is not the custom of my people.’ Never knowing whom she should be talking to; the ladies of the court always came in a single body, clutching and mobbing each other in a little bright knot, for all the world like a great unopened tulip, and the important wife could be any of them, from the snub-nosed eight-year-old to the wrinkled old crone she had once taken, initially, for a grandmother or an old nanny. The long peppery day stretched in front of her. It was very unlike her, but now, she closed her eyes and sank back into her damp spongy bed. ‘Where is my dog?’ she said at last. ‘It rained in the night,’ one of the girls said, having no response. ‘Much cooler.’