Zemindar

by Valerie Fitzgerald

  ‘Oh, and in what do you reckon Mr Erskine to be deficient?’

  ‘Oh, not only we, my dear Miss Hewitt,’ she corrected. ‘Anyone who has ever had anything to do with him recognizes that he is—well—an extremist, unbalanced. What normal man would want to live as he does, all alone out there in the mofussil, from one year’s end to the other, with only the natives around him? A wealthy man like that, why, he could have the best that India has to give. He need never spend more than a month or two of the cold weather on his estate; I can’t see what he finds to do there anyway. But as it is, he neglects all his social duties to the rest of the community, and it is well known that he holds the most peculiar views. Edgar says he speaks the language just like a native and—’ she whispered behind her hand—‘of course there has been talk of a “Petticoat Dictionary”. He reads Persian for pleasure! I suppose it’s the loneliness. It’s enough to turn anyone’s head, particularly in the hot weather. Edgar has always said that, although he is almost a neighbour—well, not quite in the English sense, you understand, a good day’s ride from Kaliaganj his place is—but well, even though Mr Erskine is comparatively near, we could not entertain him. On account of Minnie, you know. Single men of that age so often form unfortunate attachments to young girls, and we do want the best for Minnie. After all, Miss Hewitt,’ and she leaned forward confidentially, ‘one must keep one’s standards, even out here, most particularly out here, and that is just what Mr. Erskine has failed to do.’

  I had a distinct impression of the standards Mrs Bonner considered worth maintaining, and was sure that Oliver had not upheld them. I said nothing, and there was a pause.

  ‘But, Miss Hewitt,’ and there was a note of suspicion in her voice, ‘how do you know so well what Mr Erskine’s opinions are—on the matter we were discussing? Do you know him?’

  ‘Oh, I used to!’ I said noncommitally, glad that Kate was not present to expatiate.

  ‘And he talked to you, a single lady, about such a matter! Well, as you must admit, he really is not quite the thing, now, is he? Edgar will be horrified when I tell him. He is always so particular about such matters himself, and how right he was to protect dear Minnie from such a man. No wonder you say, “used to”, Miss Hewitt. No wonder!’

  I made an excuse and hurriedly left the room.

  Fortunately for me, I did not have as much time to think of what would happen if the enemy entered the entrenchment as the others had. There were now so many sick and wounded that a couple of rooms in the Martinière post had been turned into an auxiliary hospital, and I could have found useful work for myself every hour of the twenty-four. Only the seriously ill could be visited by the doctors; but almost every one of us was less than well. The symptoms of scurvy now became apparent among us, added to those of tertiary ague, rheumatism and diarrhoea. Teeth became loose in spongy gums, the smallest scratches festered and wounds refused to heal, while a knock on the hand or foot rendered the whole limb bruised and blue. We lacked almost everything now: vegetables, fruit, white bread, butter, sugar, tea and coffee, and it was rumoured that we were coming to the end of the rum and beer. Tobacco was at a premium. While the tea lasted, the men smoked tealeaves, but when this last resource was denied them, tempers were liable to flare savagely, they became morose and depressed and a wave of looting and petty thieving broke out.

  In addition to the walls, there were nine batteries of heavy guns to be manned night and day, and the numbers of the artillery had dwindled so alarmingly that now civilians, schoolboys, even—to their chagrin—cavalrymen, were indoctrinated into the mysteries of loading, firing and cleaning the heavy cannon in order to keep them in action. The professional gunners, however, had not yet learned to trust their assistants and spent their time rushing from one battery to the other to assure themselves that all was well.

  Our daily more ruinous walls were constantly tumbling down under the enemy fire and the rain, and it was of the utmost urgency to build them up again without delay. There were graves to be dug, ruins to be cleared of rubble and sketchily repaired for use, and guns to be hauled by hand from one position to another. And in all weathers and at all hours men worked on the countermines, or simply sat at the end of a tunnel listening for the sinister sound of a pick deep in the earth.

  The rain, which we had so longed for, did little to mitigate the smell of the entrenchment; instead, it provided one more hazard. The stretch of shell-holed land between our walls and the enemy was now verdant with waist-high grass, a splendid cover for pandies approaching the entrenchment.

  ‘S’truth,’ swore Toddy, describing the qualities necessary to keep oneself alive. ‘By the time we’re relieved, we’ll all ’ave ears like lynxes from listenin’ for the mines, and eyes like cats from watchin’ for the pandies. T’aint natural!’

  Mr Roberts’s shirt was frayed at the collar and lacked buttons, but it was still clean. Like the rest of us, he had lost weight, and his hands, once as smooth and well cared for as a woman’s, were covered with boils and scabs; but he still carried his musket as though it were a furled umbrella.

  ‘Have you no news for us of a cheering nature, Mr Roberts?’ I asked.

  ‘Ah, the relief! Rumours, Miss Laura. Nothing but rumours. The strain of not knowing is almost greater than hearing the worst. But I cannot understand what is keeping Havelock so long. The military gentlemen, of course, have a great many theories as to why he is delayed, but, after all, he is only forty miles away, and reached Cawnpore, as we know, a full month ago. What can there be to deter him from marching on to us?’

  ‘A roused countryside, and a great city crawling with pandies through which he must cut his way in order to reach us. Among other things,’ said Kate.

  ‘Agreed. But it is said that he has a fine force with him. I cannot but feel that he has not been given the facts—about our food supplies, for instance.’

  ‘Come now, Mr Roberts. According to your predictions, we should have died of hunger by the end of July. And here we are still going strong at the end of August. The Brigadier must know what he is about.’

  ‘But it’s not only the food. I am increasingly alarmed by the state of mind that seems to be apparent among the Sikhs. I have always had my doubts of them, you know, Mrs Barry; I always felt it would have been wiser to disarm them, or if that were impossible, order them out of the place before the Baillie Guard was closed. Who could blame them now for losing confidence in our ability to withstand the enemy? Not I for one!’

  ‘Nor I, Mr Roberts. And it is just that fact, that, though knowing our wretched position, they have remained with us for so long, that makes me think they will remain until the end.’

  ‘And then, of course, the Cawnpore affair: That alone was enough to make any native in the place wonder whether he wasn’t on the wrong side.’

  ‘Not at all! I spoke to many who were horrified at the whole thing.’

  ‘Certainly they would say so, but such a signal defeat of the British cannot but have made some impression on their minds, given rise to some doubt.’

  ‘And now, the Nana has himself been most signally defeated. Don’t forget that, Mr Roberts. The sepoys will know of that as well as the other. Really, there are times when I lose all patience with you. You mustn’t be such an old woman, Mr Roberts; you must learn to encourage optimism, not the reverse.’

  Poor Mr Roberts was quite put out by her manner and words; Kate never learned to temper her tongue to the shorn male’s vanity, but what she said was true. We needed to husband our hope, not squander our emotional energy on vague presentiments, half-formed fears and groundless suspicions. Life was so little pleasant now that dejection had to be fought off as consciously and aggressively as the pandies. Sometimes, lying sleepless on my string cot in the unquiet dark, I had caught myself wishing that the end would come, almost longing for the cessation of effort, of grief, of recurrent fear, that was all that death could mean for so many of us now. Only the thought of Pearl, only the guilt her mother’s memory still r
oused in me, only the knowledge that some few men in the hospital were the better for my presence, kept me from surrendering to the lethargy of abandoned hope.

  Mr Roberts shrugged. ‘I did not mean to alarm you,’ he said stuffily. ‘I will keep my views to myself in the future.’

  ‘Yes, please do,’ grinned Kate, unrepentant, and we all fell silent for a while.

  Kate’s words were brave ones; but how many of us at that time, including her, had any real expectation that help would arrive before we had been breached and the enclave entered, or at best starved out? From the beginning of the siege, it had been common knowledge that one determined push on the pandies’ part would be sufficient to overwhelm us, and the question continually in the minds of the garrison was when the final assault would come. So far, we had beaten off three major assaults, twice the walls had been breached, and no one knew why the enemy had allowed themselves to be repelled without accomplishing their object. Perhaps it was the lack of leadership that George Barry had declared would be more useful to us than a regiment.

  And then, at midnight on the 28th of August, Ungud returned again from Cawnpore with another message, this time from General Havelock himself.

  The authorities, judging the matter to be of a cheering nature, posted up a copy of the message for all to read.

  My dear Colonel,

  I have your letter of the 16th instant. I can only say do not negotiate, but rather perish sword in hand. Sir Colin Campbell, who came out at a day’s notice to command, upon news arriving of General Anson’s death, promises me fresh troops and you will be my first care. The reinforcements may reach me in from 20–25 days, and I will prepare everything for a march on Lucknow.

  Yours v. sincerely,

  H. Havelock. Br. Gen.

  Kate and I read it on our way home from the hospital. Dusk was falling, and sheeting rain added to the darkness. A soldier lit a lucifer and held it up, protected by one hand, to help us read the communication. He was shivering with ague, and his clothing was soaked.

  ‘Another month, it looks like, ma’am,’ he said to Kate, as she turned away from the paper, and thanked him. ‘Another month—of this!’ An all-encompassing shrug indicated the desolation of our surroundings—the rain, the sound of the guns, the mud that squelched in our shoes as we moved—and I saw in it also the man’s hunger, his fever, sleepless nights, restless days, and all his fears and hurting memories.

  ‘Yes, another month. It will be hard, but at least General Havelock has been honest with us. It will be no more than a month, I am sure. He is a man of his word, they say.’ Kate was trying to cheer the man, a thin fellow with pinched features, dull grey eyes and ginger whiskers. His expression, half furtive, half watchful, combined with his physique and features, told of a childhood in some city slum, always unsatisfied, always deprived—of food, education and hope.

  ‘Aye. But a month, ma’am. ’Tis a long time to go on like this. Is that truly what the General says in his letter? I haven’t the reading; ’twas one of my mates as told me. Would you, maybe, say out the writing for me to hear for myself?’

  Kate did as he requested and spoke a few words of encouragement to him before we walked on.

  ‘How the military mind does love a flourish,’ I said acidly, and declaimed into the teeth of the rain with appropriate gestures, “Do not negotiate—but rather perish sword in hand”! What happens, dear Kate, to us wretched swordless females?’

  The rain was warm, and one’s bare skin met it without flinching as it does at chilly English rain. It produced also, a false sense of security against the guns, wrapping us in a cocoon of grey water that obscured our vision and muffled our ears, so that we hardly hurried as we passed from the shelter of one building towards that of the next.

  ‘Oh, didn’t you know? We are to be herded together into one house and blown up—all together in a jolly bang!’

  She spoke lightly, but I knew she was not joking. With the memory of Sir Henry Lawrence’s final directions, and the example of Cawnpore ever present in their minds, the authorities had worked out some such plan. The touch of the rain turned colder as I remembered that there were now only seven hundred and fifty men to defend us, and a month of fighting still to come. But I ignored the tremor of fear, refusing to take Kate seriously.

  ‘But surely not,’ I exclaimed in a tone of well-bred horror. ‘Not everyone! Perhaps there are others like me who would sooner form part of a talukhdar’s harem?’

  ‘Ah, then let me advise you to apply at once for permission to the recognized authorities, civil and military, and in due course, perhaps even in good time, you will receive the appropriate permit … in triplicate, of course.’

  ‘Thank you. That I shall do.’ And we made the last dash to the Gaol verandah in a gale of unworthy laughter.

  Later that evening, Ungud came again to see me.

  The enemy had of late directed much of their attention to the battery in Mr Gubbins’s garden, so Toddy-Bob was not with us, but Kate was there to interpret when I got lost in the flood of Ungud’s words.

  The little man squatted on the floor with his back to the wall, wizened and nearly naked, his staff laid carefully beside him.

  He had had great difficulty in getting away from Cawnpore with General Havelock’s message, and for ten minutes or so we had to hear an account of his ingenuity and hardihood in managing at length to do so. The rebel sepoys were massed on the north bank of the Ganges at Cawnpore, but our relieving forces, after a succession of minor battles, skirmishes, and what seemed to me pointless comings and goings, were now assembling in the town to await their reinforcements and then push through to our relief. The Nana Sahib, having been defeated at Bithur, was licking his wounds in Fatehpur, and British forces were expected to re-enter Delhi within the month. All this was of consuming interest to Ungud and, as he expatiated on each detail with the enthusiasm of a military strategist, his long sinewy hands cast strange shadows in the light of the dip, as he used them to bring home a point or describe a manoeuvre.

  Then his monologue took suddenly a more interesting turn. The enemy, said Ungud, were on the point of making a great assault upon the Residency. There would be no less than eleven thousand sepoys concerned, and they would have the help—‘they say,’ said he—of natives within the entrenchment. We had returned to the question of the loyalty of the Sikhs. Perhaps Mr Roberts would, after all, have the satisfaction of being in the right, though if he were, he would have scant time to enjoy his triumph.

  We thanked Ungud for bringing us his news, and said we were sorry we could offer him no tea, not having any ourselves. He made the usual deprecatory gesture, palms upwards and a shrug of the shoulders. Then he looked at the floor between his feet for a moment, apparently in deep concentration. Kate, Jess and I regarded him in silence, sure that more was to come.

  ‘This is not all,’ he said at last, looking directly at me. ‘I have other news, but whether good or bad, I cannot say. It is not the concern of Inglis Sahib, or Gubbins Sahib, but of us of Hassanganj.’

  I watched him attentively.

  ‘It is said … No!’ He stopped, thought a moment and started again. ‘This I know, it is true, there is an officer, Lieutenant Delafosse, who is now with the General Sahib in Cawnpore.’

  I could not immediately see any relevance to Hassanganj in this piece of information, but my heart beat faster as I awaited further enlightenment.

  ‘This officer,’ he went on slowly, his eyes never leaving my face, ‘this officer was at Cawnpore. On the day of the boats.’

  So then I understood. One man had survived the Nana’s treachery. But why had Ungud mentioned ‘us of Hassanganj’? I had never heard of Lieutenant Delafosse.

  ‘Go on, Ungud,’ Kate said quietly. ‘What is it you have to tell us?’

  I could not have spoken with such composure. I did not want to hear how Oliver had met his death, even supposing this man Delafosse really knew.

  ‘With this officer, there were many other men
on the boat. Many were wounded, some dead. But the boat, for two days, sailed down the river, and then, though I cannot tell how, when most of them had been killed by the Nana’s men who harried them from the banks, this officer, and some others, all … escaped! He is alone now. And has yet only reached the bilaiti paltan in Mangalwar. But, Miss-sahib, if he has done so, cannot the others who were with him—four, five, more perhaps—cannot those others reach safety too?’

  Still I waited for some word that Oliver had been among the men who had drifted down the river in the single fugitive boat. But when Kate put the question to him directly, Ungud shook his head. He had not himself spoken to Lieutenant Delafosse, but had heard of his presence and this much of his story in the lines. All were speaking of it. It was, and Ungud again turned his eyes on me, it was surely possible that even more of the Nana’s intended victims had escaped, for on that one boat there had been ‘many men’, and Delafosse and his companions, who had somehow managed to drift further down the river on a raft, were not necessarily the only ones left alive.

  ‘Is it not possible—’ here he wagged his head and hands in concert to emphasize his hope—‘is it not possible that the Lat-sahib lives? Surely this can be thought of now?’

  During the first part of his recital, though I tried not to allow it, I had known a flicker of hope. By the end I had realized that I was listening to just another kahani, those longwinded tales, lacking point or purpose, that are so dear to the Indian heart, and mean so little to the brisker Western mind. Perhaps one man had survived the carnage at Cawnpore. Perhaps even more than one had escaped. But what chance was there that Oliver should be among them? Ungud had clutched at a straw. And then, mercilessly smothering that flicker of hope with douches of cold reason, say he had escaped by some incredible piece of luck, what was the likelihood of his ever reaching safety? At large in a hostile country, most probably injured or sick, his existence was threatened a hundred times an hour. No! To hope against hope when the odds were so unequal was sheerest folly.