Zemindar

by Valerie Fitzgerald

  Emily had appreciated it, though. How many times, I wondered, had I heard her say, ‘Oliver’s so thoughtful … so considerate.’ Now, as in my mind I played out the memories of our pleasant days in Hassanganj, I recalled a score of incidents that instanced that consideration of others, and of myself. Why was it that I had blinded myself to his merits with such enthusiasm? Could it have been fear? Had he always held an attraction for me that I was reluctant to admit because of the unlikelihood that I would have any attraction for him? Had I insisted on dwelling on his shortcomings only to save myself from being overlooked or superseded in the regard of a man I could love?

  He had told me he loved me, and had added that I had missed the many hints he had given me of his feeling. At the time, and for many days thereafter, there had been small leisure or opportunity for me to examine this surprising assertion, but what had remained in my mind through the weeks of separation were his last words to me as the palanquin was lifted and I was borne away to the house of Wajid Khan: ‘Never fear, Laura, I will come to you—for you!’ They had reverberated around me, the echoes of those words, in the steamy courtyard on the night of Emily’s death, and at last I realized that it was they alone that had filled me with the strange certainty of my own survival. Had I not found, after all, the best possible reason for clinging to life? I was in love.

  Love was something, so people said, that must grow slowly and sweetly, nurtured by knowledge, appreciation and shared experience. When I considered the matter, it was plain that I had gained a pretty thorough knowledge of Oliver Erskine, that my appreciation of him had advanced greatly since the early days of our acquaintance, and that we had certainly shared some of the most curious experiences ever to fall to the lot of law-abiding English folk.

  True, a barrier of misunderstanding and misinterpretation still stood between us; that must come down before we could grow towards each other. But honesty forced me to admit that all the misinterpretation and most of the misunderstanding had been on my part, not his, and even as I did so, the last wavelets of both ebbed swiftly into the tide of the forgotten past, leaving my mind clear and acceptant as new-washed sand.

  Certainly Oliver lacked all those qualities that made Charles the man he was. Oliver could never be considered genial, kindly or open. He was inclined to be dictatorial, was quick-tempered and careless of moral convention. Yet there were other excellences than those exhibited by Charles. Oliver was himself and, I admitted without a qualm, more than Charles would ever be. Oliver had imagination and insight; he was slow to judge and, for all his anti-social protestations, tolerant of others; he was quick to act and decisive in action; there was a strength in him that I both admired and feared; yet he was capable of true gentleness. He was the last man in my acquaintance to whom the tender epithet ‘lovable’ could be applied; yet now, quite suddenly, I knew myself to be in love with him.

  A sudden rush of feeling, compounded of regret for my past shortsightedness and of an aching desire for his presence so that I could amend matters, brought tears to my eyes. I let them fall unheeded. In that dark room, on a face dripping with perspiration, no one could have remarked them.

  The acknowledgement of my love, total now, flooded over me like a golden, light-filled warmth, filling me with joy. ‘I love him! I love him!’ I kept repeating to myself, as the cruel cacophony of the battle continued outside. ‘I love him … and he loves me. I know it. He loves me!’

  Made restless by my inward and inexpressible delight, I went into the kitchen and paced its length from front door to back door with quick blind steps. I heard nothing of what occurred beyond the fastness of these rickety planks, saw nothing of the smoke-grimed murky room they guarded. All I could see now was Oliver—my love—and all of life in a new light.

  I did not allow myself to dwell on the old tower and Moti, but fled delightedly back to memories of things we had shared and enjoyed together. The morning rides through the dewy fields; my struggles with Urdu, and Oliver pretending to read at his desk as I worked, but always aware when I was in difficulties; afternoons when we wrestled together with catalogues, inventories and plans in the library; and evenings when we sat alone with our books before the fire, the only sound a falling log or the rustle of a turned page. Why, I could reconstruct an entire day of happiness from these piecemeal memories. I made up my mind to live that happy day over on each of the days I must exist through before I next saw him; and such was the euphoria of my mood, that scanty memory seemed almost enough to keep me in the state of bliss I then experienced.

  Briefly I was recalled to the present by another blast close to our window. Pearl, whom I had placed on my bed, stirred and whimpered. I went in to her and soothed her with a little water; then returned eagerly to the ecstasy I now found present in my most prosaic memories. My mind’s eye followed Oliver with love, as he strode swiftly about the house and grounds of Hassanganj or sat on his great bay gelding, one hand on his hip, straightbacked and commanding. I watched his lean brown hands on the reins, heard his voice, smiled at his laugh, looked again curiously into the strange tawny eyes under their heavy brows, those eyes that had last looked into mine from a face grimed and stubbled with beard but full of searching tenderness, full of understanding love.

  That, I decided, was when I had learned to love him, though I would not then admit it. On that morning when he had ridden away from me to risk his safety and perhaps his life for his child.

  At about three o’clock the firing slackened and by four o’clock the entrenchment was for the second time that day filled with an unnatural quiet.

  Kate had dozed, exhausted by her praying, and I, lost in my new-found joy, remained unaware of the silence until she sat up and called out, unbelievingly, ‘Laura, it must be over! Listen! Listen to the quiet! We must have beaten them off, Laura. We’re safe. Our lads have beaten them off!’

  Recalled unwillingly to the moment, I unbarred the kitchen door and the two of us stepped hesitantly on to the verandah, blinking in the harsh sunlight.

  Along the verandah, other doors opened and other women, many with babies in their arms or holding children by the hand, crowded out. They were as ignorant and as anxious as ourselves, and the sudden silence kept them speechless as their eyes, like ours, searched for information. That silence, after so much noise so long continued, was as painful to our ears as the strong sun was to our dark-accustomed eyes. It was almost frightening.

  Over the entrenchment a dense pall of smoke wreathed and wraithed between and around the shattered buildings, and the stench of cordite was such as to overpower the more usual smell of putrefaction.

  As we became accustomed to the light and the smoke, figures became apparent in the haze, men, exhausted and silent, sitting in the shade of a wall, or stretched on the muddy earth, still holding fast to smoking muskets or rifles. Some walked slowly to their billets, black-faced and red-eyed; some limped; some stumbled and remained where they fell; some helped a comrade, some carried stretchers to the hospital; some just sat where they had stood, heads bowed between their knees, shoulders heaving with exertion. All were quiet. Cheers should have rent the smoky air, wild hurrahs of triumph. But fatigue had felled them when the enemy had failed; and now that the impetus to movement was over they collapsed where their knees buckled under them in motionless silence.

  I ventured down the verandah steps and moved hesitantly through the smoke a little way, picking a path between the debris and mud. Soon I recognized a familiar figure stumbling towards me, and ran forward to intercept him, since he seemed not to have noticed me.

  ‘Wally!’ I cried, shaking him by the arm to get his attention, so sunk was he in his own thoughts and fatigue. ‘Wally, do tell me? Is it all right? What’s happened? Is it really all over? Oh, Wally, we know nothing but surely we have not … capitulated?’

  He stopped, shook the sweat out of his eyes and looked at me.

  ‘Eh? Laura? Capitulated? Good God, no! We licked ’em!’

  ‘We’ve won?’
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br />   ‘Won? How can we? No, but we’ve beaten ’em off for the moment. Until the next time.’

  ‘They’ve drawn back then?’

  ‘Yes. Right back. There’ll be some quiet tonight, with any luck. We’re all right, Laura. All right.’

  He shook away my hand with some impatience and moved away in hurried anticipation of his quarters and his brandy.

  I turned back to the Gaol with tears of relief sliding down my sweaty face and, as I did so, caught sight of Charles coming towards me, with Ishmial behind him carrying their two guns. Even at a distance, I could see that Charles was hurt, and I hurried to him.

  ‘Don’t touch me, Laura,’ he implored as I reached out. ‘I’m not much hurt really, but don’t touch me.’ I had put out my arm to help him.

  ‘But what has happened? Where were you hit?’

  ‘My shoulders and upper back,’ he grated through clenched teeth. ‘Nothing much; a shell exploded some way behind me, and I have been peppered with spent shrapnel and muck. Just let me sit down for a while, and then you and Kate can have a look at it.’

  ‘Oh, Charles! I’ll run for a doctor, or Ishmial will, I’m sure!’

  ‘No need. Anyway, you won’t get one to come. Just let me have a rest and then you can get the damned stuff out yourselves.’

  We sat him down gingerly on the box in the kitchen, and I made some fresh tea, extravagant in my use of leaves. When Charles had drunk his wordlessly and greedily, Kate cut away his shirt and examined his back.

  ‘Well, I’ve seen a lot worse than that in my time, m’lad. You were lucky not to have been nearer the big bang, were you not?’

  ‘I know. It killed two men; blew them to bits, I hear. But this is bad enough for the moment. If I hadn’t been standing in a bit of a trench, I wouldn’t be able to sit down this side of Christmas.’ And he tried to laugh as he laid himself face down on Kate’s bed.

  ‘Good. That’s the spirit. Now I want hot water, scissors and a darning needle. And open that window, Laura. I need all the light I can get. Light two candles and get Ishmial to hold them for me, and you, Laura, you had better get to work on something to eat. Even that ghastly stew of yours seems almost appetizing at the moment, and I’m sure the lads can do with something hot too. Now, out of my way, girl. Ishmial—here!’

  Ishmial hastily finished his mug of tea, wiped his moustache with the back of his hand and took the lighted candles from me. I was relieved to be exempted from watching or helping with the operation and turned my attention to the bullock meat and lentils. For over an hour I was left alone to stir the unsavoury amalgam in the pot and think my oddly happy thoughts, which had immediately reverted to Oliver the moment I was alone. At the end of that period, Charles emerged, white but more comfortable, with his torso bandaged in strips of my only linen petticoat, and Kate behind him looking complacent and pleased with her handiwork.

  Somehow Toddy-Bob, down at Gubbins’s battery, had learned of Charles’s injury, and just then appeared with a bottle of brandy hidden under his jacket and a screw of paper containing six sugar lumps concealed in his sun helmet. These offerings were accepted without demur or enquiry and, as I poured out a generous measure of the liquor for Charles, I blessed Toddy’s forethought in getting himself transferred to Mr Gubbins’s post. Toddy looked wistfully at the bottle as I placed it on the shelf, and Kate, following the direction of his eyes, smiled.

  ‘Oh, come now, Laura!’ she protested. ‘This has been a trying day for us all, and I think a dram would do me almost as much good as Charles. Surely you wouldn’t dream of sending Tod away without a heartener on such an occasion?’

  So I took down the bottle again, and we each had a drink, while Charles, feeling better for the food and brandy, and with a hint of colour returned to his dirty cheeks, gave us an account of the day’s battle.

  The mine directed at the Redan Battery, our largest, strongest and most important strongpoint, had been ill-laid and, instead of breaching our defences at the vital point, had exploded harmlessly, if alarmingly, much short of its objective. No doubt the pandies had been disappointed by the failure of the mine, but ready mustered for attack as they were, had hurled themselves into battle, flinging wave after wave of men against our walls while their guns opened a murderous cannonade into the entrenchment from their vantage points surrounding us.

  ‘I never thought I’d live to see the end of them,’ said Charles. ‘My rifle barrel got so hot, my palms are blistered … see! There was no end to the devils: they just came on and on and on. We’d beat them off at one point, only to see them bring up reinforcements at another; then the ones we’d beaten off would regroup, be joined by more, and attack again before we had time to wipe the sweat from our eyes. I swear I didn’t know there were so many blasted sepoys in all India! They fought splendidly too, and I’m damned if I can guess why they let us beat them off and win the day into the bargain. Around three o’clock, the firing began to taper off and soon afterwards the ceasefire was called. God knows why. There were still thousands of them milling around below us, though their ardour had certainly been dampened.’

  ‘They called for a truce, the bastards!’ Toddy said with satisfaction. ‘To remove their dead, like. There’s ’undreds of the beggars lyin’ in the muck outside, dead as mutton or gettin’ on that way. ’Orses too, and gun-bullocks and that. Thank Gawd they ’as the decency to want to bury and burn ’em all proper like. Think what the smell would be like if they didn’t!’

  ‘Oh, Tod!’ Kate remonstrated, but it was impossible not to smile at Toddy’s mixture of unction and common sense; the stench would indeed have been intolerable had the dead been allowed to rot at our walls.

  ‘Yes, ’undreds of ’em … and I’m not exaggeratin’ either, mind! You cast your blinkers over the parapet and you’ll see ’em bein’ taken away by the cartload. And shall I tell you how many we lost?’

  I frowned discouragingly; I did not want to hear the numbers or names of our dead. It was sufficient to know that we few friends were still safe and together. But Toddy disregarded my glare.

  ‘We lost four whites killed and a dozen wounded, and maybe a dozen of our own ’eathens gone to their ’eathen ’Eaven. Four, mind you, just four!’

  ‘But how can you possibly know?’ queried Kate with scepticism. ‘Everything is still so confused, surely.’

  ‘Sure enough! But I been down in the ’ospital ’elpin’ to lay ’em out, like, mam. Makes it me business to know them as ’as gone on account of the auctions, like. No sense in losin’ time at the sale of a man who didn’t have nothin’ I might want. But when I gives a ’and to sewin’ them up, I gets a pretty fair idea of a party’s effects, if you follow me. Now tomorrow or the day after there’ll be pretty pickings, I reckon, on account of two of the gonners bein’ gentlemen, like.’

  He accompanied his words with a satisfied smirk so droll that, in spite of the morbid matter of his discourse, we all laughed. The possessions of the dead were generally auctioned soon after burial, and, though at first the custom had been considered deplorable, now we were all used to bidding for the clothing, stores and little luxuries of our comrades and friends, there being no other way of supplying our own lack. As time went on and casualties grew heavier, it was quite common for a jacket or a pair of boots to change hands several times without ever being worn by their successive purchasers.

  But, though our losses were so few on that day of the first assault, one of them at least was of the utmost importance to us. Cassandra, the goat.

  When Toddy went into the courtyard to milk her, he found she had been blown to bits by the shell that had bombarded our doors with shrapnel. As he commented mournfully when he returned with the news, there was not even enough of her left to make a meal. Terrified by the initial explosion of the mine, then anxious to soothe Kate, and later lost in my new and private world of love, I had not given the animal a thought all day. If I had remembered it, I would certainly have brought her into the kitchen, for one odour more or
less would have been more than worth the animal’s safety.

  ‘Oh, miss, miss!’ Toddy turned to me with something like agony on his strange features. ‘Oh, miss! And what’s goin’ to ’appen to the nipper now?’

  He had realized sooner than we that the shell had killed Pearl as surely as it had killed the goat. Without the goat’s milk, she would die. There was nothing else on which we could feed a three-month-old infant.

  The room was suddenly hushed. The mosquitoes whined and the fat blue flies buzzed contentedly as they explored our empty plates.

  Charles laid his head on his arms folded on the table, and I sat down slowly, thinking of the dreadful days that must follow as the baby starved. I wished I was sufficiently Christian to ask God to give me strength to bear another’s suffering, but I was not. I did not pray; instead I railed against the Fate or Deity that could allow the agony of the innocent. ‘Let us all die!’ I raged silently to whatever power it is that has the arranging of such matters. ‘Let us all die! We know why we die and what has caused our death; perhaps we have even deserved to suffer. But this child has harmed no one. Let her not die so cruelly, so horribly. Oh, let her not die. Take me!’ I hardly knew what I said, nor to whom I was saying it. My ideas of religion were rudimentary, but not so elemental that they could countenance a vengeful and vindictive God, so I suppose it was the Devil with whom I attempted to bargain.

  I shut my eyes and for a moment was overwhelmed. No sight I had seen until then, not Elvira Wilkins’s body swinging half-devoured in a starlit grove, not Emily’s swift unlovely dissolution, not the casualties carried past our door on bloody stretchers, had affected me as now I was affected by the figments of my own imagination: the tortures endured by a small child dying slowly of hunger, while her elders watched in helplessness. I felt physically ill with apprehension.