Zemindar

by Valerie Fitzgerald

  Ungud was disturbed by our reception of his story.

  ‘It is good to hope!’ he insisted, with puzzlement on his seamed brown face.

  Kate shook her head. ‘One man only, that you know, out of all the many men who were there, has lived. Let us leave it at that.’

  ‘Han! Han!’ he agreed, quite unconvinced. ‘But what of the others who were with him? Lieutenant Delafosse himself thinks that some of them must live.’

  ‘Perhaps! Perhaps! But there is treachery, Ungud, hunger, accident, animals, exhaustion. All these could have put an end to them since Lieutenant Delafosse last saw them. And, anyway, we do not know that the Lat-sahib was one of them. What is the good of thinking he might have been? What is the good of hoping with so little foundation? Better let us forget.’

  ‘Such are the words of foolish women,’ Ungud muttered bitterly as he got to his feet. ‘But I am a man and a soldier. The Lat-sahib was a man, and, though he was no soldier, I say this: if a man could survive by fighting, by cunning, by strength of arm or sureness of aim, then the Lat-sahib, my sahib, has survived. This I believe, and thus I shall hope.’

  He salaamed and left us, dignity and disappointment equally present in the set of his thin naked shoulders.

  BOOK V

  RELIEF

  ‘That which does not make a

  man worse than he was, also

  does not make his life worse, nor

  does it harm him whether from

  without or from within.’

  Marcus Aurelius

  CHAPTER 1

  August became September and we entered the third month of the siege, though few besides those zealous ladies addicted to the keeping of diaries realized the fact. For most of us, the conduct of our lives had become no more than the continuation of an unbreakable habit. We had to live, so we ate what came our way, snatched sleep as we could and worked on, but without interest and often without active hope. We endured. Even the alarms inherent in our situation which had so terrified us in the first days had been repeated so often and in so monotonous a pattern of unlucky death or miraculous escape that we almost welcomed any event or disaster serious enough to be remembered with clarity. I know that not many of us were buoyed up by the promise of General Havelock’s relieving force, at least after the initial surprise, for nothing changed for the better. The rain continued, the heat never abated, our enemy’s guns thundered on. Each day brought its deaths, its quota of wounded to the hospital, its sicknesses to the women and children in damp cellars and dark rooms. Only the insects thrived and proliferated, and the sole cheerful sound in the entrenchment was the chorus of the toads.

  The only discernible result of General Havelock’s communication was that our rations were cut by half. For myself, I was so sick of the endless repetition of chapattis, lentils and gun-bullock meat, I found little deprivation in the smaller amounts issued to us. But the men, always overworked, always tired, were also constantly famished, and one day as Jessie was piling up leathery chapattis on a tin plate for our supper, a private of the 32nd, seeing them from the verandah, rushed into the kitchen, slapped a silver rupee on the table, grabbed two of the chapattis and made off with them.

  ‘I ran after him wi’ the siller,’ Jessie said, recounting the incident. ‘I said he was welcome and more to a’ we had and no payment necessary, but he had stuffed his maw so fu’ he couldna speak and he just shook his head at me and slunk away like a thievin’ pi-dog in the bazaar, and wi’ the same desperate look in his eyes. Och, Miss Laura, what are we comin’ tae when a Christian man behaves like a starved beastie?’

  ‘It is my considered opinion,’ averred Mr Roberts, who was with us at the time, ‘that this measure of halving the allowance of food is unnecessary. Quite unnecessary.’

  ‘What?’ Kate and I exclaimed simultaneously, and Kate continued, ‘But Mr Roberts, for weeks past you have assured us that, if the pandies did not get us, starvation would. Now, when it seems that the authorities have some reason to concur with your opinion, you about-face and declare them wrong!’

  ‘Quite so, Mrs Barry, quite so. But I was speaking yesterday to Mr Simon Martin—the Deputy Commissioner, I am sure you know him—and he told me that Sir Henry Lawrence had ordered him to make provision for three thousand persons for six entire months. That was, of course, before the siege commenced.’

  ‘And Mr Martin did this?’

  ‘Certainly. Of course there was a great deal of confusion at the time, the military gentlemen insisting on purchasing and laying in their own provisions, despite the steps taken by the civil authorities, so no precise estimate of what is available is possible. But it is a great deal more than sufficient to see us to the 10th of September. A great deal more indeed.’

  ‘Well, I know for a fact,’ Kate went on after we had digested Mr Roberts’s information, ‘that there are still sufficient of those wretched Commissariat bullocks to last us all for weeks. Not that I wouldn’t sooner starve, mind, but I know they are there!’

  ‘Precisely, I too have heard, and indeed seen with my own eyes, that there is ample meat. If one may dignify it with that appellation!’

  ‘Well, I suppose someone knows what they are doing,’ Kate said grumpily.

  ‘You don’t look any too well tonight, Mr Roberts,’ I broke in. ‘Are you coming down with a cold? Almost everyone has one at the moment.’

  He had been sniffing constantly since his arrival, well-ordered, gentlemanly sniffs to be sure, but sniffs all the same, and there was a pinched look to his red-tipped nose. His grey alpaca jacket was still neat and as clean as his own inexpert hands could make it, but it hung on him and the hands folded on his knee were thin and trembled visibly.

  ‘No, no, Miss Laura, no cold at all. I am quite well, remarkably so indeed when I think of what others are suffering. I could do with a pinch of snuff, of course; nothing would steady my nerves more quickly … but!’

  ‘I am sorry we cannot offer you that; but a drop of toast-water before you go perhaps?’

  ‘No, thank you, my dear. I must get back to my post.’

  He made his adieux and turned to the door; then hesitated before turning back to us, saying, ‘By the bye, I have not seen Toddy-Bob for some days past. I trust nothing has happened to him?’

  ‘Oh, Toddy’s indestructible, thank heavens,’ I assured him. ‘I expect he’s been too busy, for even we have not seen as much of him as usual.’

  ‘Then would you be good enough to ask him to come to me, when he has a moment free? He does the odd small commission for me, as I am sure you know. A most helpful chap really, and there is a matter I believe he could attend to more satisfactorily than I could myself.’

  ‘Of course. We’ll send him around to you directly he appears.’

  ‘Thank you. Thank you very much.’ He lifted his correct grey hat, stained at the band but still in shape, and departed.

  ‘He is looking seedy, don’t you think, Kate? I do hope he is not sickening for something.’

  ‘He’s been sick for an unco’ number of years, if ye were to ask me!’ Jessie put in dourly before Kate could reply.

  ‘What do you mean, Jess? He has always looked well to me.’

  ‘’Tis the habit, d’ye ken? I’m thinkin’ he has it bad. There’s a look about them that has been takin’ it for some time and then can find nae more.’

  ‘What habit?’ I remained unenlightened.

  ‘Opium,’ Kate said quietly, while Jessie regarded her knitting in silence.

  ‘Opium? Mr Roberts?’

  ‘I have suspected it for some time,’ Kate said.

  ‘But he’s so self-contained and … and proper! Are you sure?’

  ‘I’d be very surprised if he were the only gentleman among us suffering more from the deprivation of opium than of food. Very surprised! But not all the money in the world can buy what no longer exists in this place.’

  ‘Aye! There’s none to be had by any, and that’s the truth. Not even a bittie wee pipeful left
among the lot o’ us!’

  ‘How do you know, Jess?’

  ‘The wee man was tellin’ me. ’Tis he who did the findin’ of it for Mr Roberts—when it could be found. No doubt but that is why the poor gentleman has nae seen him!’

  ‘Of course, Toddy-Bob! I should have known. He has even left a couple of packets with me for Mr Roberts when he couldn’t wait to see him himself. I thought they were tobacco or snuff.’

  ‘Well, ’tis the Lord’s hand nae doubt. If yon gentleman can weather these next few weeks, he’ll be free o’ the hankerin’. An’ that will be a blessin’. ’Tis the expense, ye ken, the sair expense!’

  As silence fell between us, my mind went back many weeks to my bedroom in Hassanganj and to Oliver standing with the baby in his arms and saying, ‘There’s many a fine English gentleman who has been reared on the infernal poppy!’ But I was still capable of surprise.

  Ungud’s account of Lieutenant Delafosse’s escape from Cawnpore, unspecific as it was, had disturbed me, despite my resolution not to indulge an idle hope. When he left us, he had sought out Toddy-Bob and Ishmial who must have proved a more sympathetic audience than we three women, for on the following evening Toddy walked in on us, looking more cheerful and less debauched than he had for several weeks past, and I realized that he, at least, had clutched at Ungud’s straw. There was no avoiding the subject however much I wished to, and when he had beaten the likelihood of Oliver’s escape back and forth between us for some time, I could have screamed, ‘Stop, oh, stop! I will not be unreasonable; I want no belief in the impossible; I cannot leave myself open to further anguish!’ But I restrained myself, for it was so obvious that Toddy-Bob needed to hope as much as I feared to. I listened to his reasons but determined to dismiss them from my mind.

  Which, of course, was impossible.

  At night now, I lay thinking not of the desperate carnage at the river, nor of the few happy hours I had spent in Oliver Erskine’s company, but imagining his reappearance in my life. When I scolded myself for this foolishness an insistent voice at the back of my mind would repeat, ‘But it is possible. Only just possible. But surely possible?’ As it is seldom that cold reason is the victor in a conflict between head and heart, and with all my heart I wanted Oliver alive, sooner or later I would catch myself protesting, ‘Of course it’s possible! More—it’s even probable. Remember what Oliver was like.’

  But always, at this point, that other small voice—of reason—would point out icily, ‘But what right have you to hope for the life of one particular man amongst so many?’ And only when the shadow-fight of right reason with rebellious hope had exhausted me would I sink into a restless sleep.

  Then, once again, our individual struggles were merged and forgotten in a common effort, as through a long day we withstood the attack Ungud had foretold, the fourth major assault the pandies had launched against us.

  Once more our men managed to repel the attackers, but when it was all over, for the first time the garrison showed no exhilaration, no triumph. I believe we all felt that day that nothing had been achieved by our efforts but an added margin of fatigue, suffering and near despair, and when Charles visited us at nightfall he told us how through all that long day of shattering noise our men had fought in almost total silence. The silence of exhaustion.

  One cheering fact emerged, however. The native troops of the garrison, including the Sikhs on whom so many doubts were focused, had fought with dedicated ferocity. There was nothing else to cheer us, and that one reassuring fact was not sufficient to lift the spirits for long, for all of us suffered to some extent from depression and lowness of heart. The weather changed too, becoming suddenly much cooler, so that the shelterless men at the batteries were now shivering from cold as only a few days before they had shivered from ague. All the tents and rolls of canvas had long since been built into the stockade.

  Charles was again wounded in the fourth assault, but again not seriously. A shell splinter cut through the calf of his left leg but, though no bones were broken and he insisted on hobbling about his normal duties, the wound would not heal. In the hospital every man was showing similar symptoms: small wounds, sometimes mere abrasions, remained open, often growing larger and festering despite prompt attention. ‘It’s the diet,’ Dr Partridge said when I questioned him. ‘We are suffering from scurvy, as sailors do at sea when they can get no fresh fruit or vegetables. There’s nothing any of us can do about it. Blood’s bad; lacks something that contributes to the healing process. Lemons help, but what hope have we of lemons here?’ He had turned away shaking his head wearily at the thought of the mountain of insuperable problems he was expected to deal with.

  That evening when we were assembled for supper, I told my household what the doctor had said.

  ‘’Course!’ Toddy-Bob jeered. ‘Everyone knows that; that’s why the blackies go over the wall every night—to get theirselves a handful of sag, to add to their lentils. They’re in better fettle that we are by a long shot too.’

  ‘They get over the wall?’ exclaimed Kate, horrified.

  ‘Sure, ma’am—reg’lar. They always likes this green stuff, sag, in their curries and that, you see, and now they just adds it to their dhal, their lentils. They say it does ’em good. I’ll get you some if you want.’

  ‘Oh, no, Tod. You mustn’t,’ I protested hurriedly.

  ‘’Old ’ard, miss. Toddy-Bob ’ops over that wall for nothin’ nor no one, so don’t worry your ’ead on that one. Not as there’s much ’oppin’ to do, mind. There’s places in this bloody wall of ours where you can just open a door or slip through a ’ole into the long grass and no one any the wiser. It don’t need no ’eroics, or there wouldn’t ’ave been so many desertions. Them Christian drummers, you remember ’em, miss? They just pushed open a door and walked out, like. And left the door open. The stuff’s bin comin’ in the same way too, see?’

  ‘Stuff?’

  ‘Yes, miss. Messages. To the blackies from their friends outside. And tobacco. Rum for a while too. And …’ He stopped.

  ‘And opium?’ Kate asked shrewdly.

  ‘Well yes, ma’am. That too.’ Toddy blinked his button eyes.

  ‘Is that how you have been managing to supply Mr Roberts?’ Kate continued sternly.

  ‘He asked me, ma’am! An’ I never took a penny for it, seein’ the cruel packet he ’ad to pay the sowar I got it from in the first place. Never made a penny off of ’im, I didn’t. Didn’t seem ’ardly right to me. I ain’t never touched the stuff myself. Seen what it does to a man. But the old gentleman, well ’e really needed it, like—see? So I just obliges ’im. When I could, that is.’

  ‘And you can oblige him no longer?’

  ‘No, ma’am. First, because the Sikh sowar who sold it to me ’as took ’is passage to a better world. Then, because there’s no more comin’ in. The pandies thought more of us would desert to get it, see—and we might of—but then word gets round they kill deserters anyways, like them chickaboo drummers, so, well, that’s it. None of the stuff around any more. Not for commercial purposes anyway.’

  This intelligence of Toddy’s brought home to me how little we women knew of what was going on around us. My horizon had been somewhat extended since Kate and I had started visiting the hospital, but even so I had not caught a glimpse of the world outside the wall since the end of June, and even the world within the wall came to us largely by hearsay. With a few exceptions even the men who led us were to me, at least, only names. Sir Henry Lawrence I had glimpsed but twice on our arrival; his successor, Major Banks, killed soon after his appointment, I never to my knowledge set eyes upon. Mr Gubbins I recognized, as I did Brigadier ‘Bluff Jack’ Inglis who was now in command of the entrenchment. But there were a score of other names I heard and used myself day after day whose owners were as remote as the prominent characters mentioned in a newspaper. As in a newspaper, also, it was the heroes and the villains who were most frequently mentioned and whose death or injury caused most comment. So, w
hen one of our great heroes, Captain Fulton, met his end, Mrs Bonner braved a heavy rainstorm late at night to run down the verandah and tell us of the fact, and though I had probably never even seen the gentleman, my heart sank a little on hearing of his death. Captain Fulton, a young, high-spirited Engineer, had controlled and directed the mining operations within the entire entrenchment. Cheerful, energetic and unconventional, it was inevitable that his personality should form the kernel of one of those myths fastened upon as inspiration by people in peril.

  ‘He had dined with Mr Gubbins,’ Mrs. Bonner confided tearfully. ‘Afterwards he went out into the garden with his field-glass to try and make out what the pandies were doing across the way—and was killed. All in a second, Miss Hewitt. The back of his head was taken off by a nine-pound shot, but Major Bonner says that when they laid him out on a bed no one could have told what killed him. So awful, Miss Hewitt, his face was quite unmarked. But just … just a mask!’

  Kate crossed herself. ‘Glory be, but that’s a sore loss that we’ll all be feeling. A sore loss.’

  ‘Second only to that of Sir Henry himself,’ Mrs Bonner concurred, for once in harmony with Kate.

  My birthday falls on the 16th of September, so I remember well the date when Ungud came to tell us he was going ‘out’ for the third and last time.

  Toddy-Bob had donated a bottle of brandy for our celebration. No one asked where it had come from, and even the thought of the men in the hospital failed to rouse my conscience as I allowed the warmth of the spirit to slide down my throat.

  Charles was with us, but Pearl, exhausted by the attention given to her new accomplishment of clapping hands, had been put to bed. Ishmial sat on the verandah, a silent benevolent spectator to our festivity. As a Muslim he could not be tempted to the brandy, but the equally God-fearing Jessie agreed to a tot and became more loquacious and Scottish with every sip. I had hoped that Mr Roberts could be with us but his visits of late had been less frequent and I had had no opportunity to invite him to the ‘party’. Wallace Avery we had seen only three or four times since Emily’s death, and from all accounts it was probably as well he was not with us.