A Far Horizon (4 page)

*

He had left his home before seven as usual. It was his custom to walk to the Courthouse situated on the Avenue. The Chief Magistrate found this morning exercise beneficial; his palanquin followed behind. In the coolness of the early hours the sun had yet to bite into the day and chew it to a pulp. Holwell walked carefully. His deliberation, unusual for a man of rapid step, was accounted for by the dust. Except when the skies opened, dust rose at the slightest provocation, endowing his shoes with the quality of soft moleskin. The dark eyes of vegetable hawkers, baskets on head, slid his way beneath the weight of aubergines, onions and jackfruit. On
white-painted
balconies servants dusted rails and peered down at the black velour of his hat. Untouchables, whose day was regulated by the straining bowels of White Town, slipped out of back gates with the first stinking buckets of effluent. They stared curiously at the cautious-stepping Holwell.

At intervals the Chief Magistrate stopped to look about him. His gaunt frame reared up like a long-legged bird, his attention deflected for an instant from the dust about his feet. In Calcutta they were never free of the eyes of spies. In Murshidabad Alivardi Khan was
known to have scrolls that filled a whole room, inked thickly with knowledge of Calcutta’s élite. This unseen violation of both his territory and his person filled the Chief Magistrate with rage. With narrowed lids he scanned the nearby architecture, meeting with a silent glare the invisible eyes he was sure must press upon him.

Eventually he turned into the entrance of the Courthouse. Here the day had already commenced. There was the buzz of activity in corridors, and the sweaty fuss of wigs. A close smell of warm wood, old food, armpits and privies pervaded the place; a comforting, manly odour of business, challenge and incrimination. Holwell made his way up a flight of stairs to the room of the Chief Magistrate. On the top step he collided with William Dumbleton, Calcutta’s Notary. The collision knocked Dumbleton’s wig askew and he straightened it with a laugh. Holwell returned the Notary’s greeting, ignoring Dumbleton’s rapier eyes.

The Courthouse was home to the Mayor’s Court, at which, this morning, Holwell was to preside. The Mayor’s Court heard the lawsuits of Christian Calcutta. It upheld the rights of not only the English and Europeans in the settlement but also those descendants of the Portuguese, now long intermarried with India, if they still professed to be Christian. The Mayor’s Court called upon Holwell for a minimum of hours. As Chief Zamindar and Magistrate to the Cutcherry, or native court, it was with Black Town’s petitions for justice that John Zephaniah Holwell was more closely concerned.

In his room the Chief Magistrate sipped a glass of sweet lime juice, squeezed freshly for him each morning. Its astringency washed through his veins, preparing him for the day. The Courthouse faced the Park and the cool waters of the Great Tank, surrounded by lawns and flowering trees, criss-crossed by dusty paths. The wide roads and great homes of Calcutta, set in large gardens, filled Holwell with a sense of rightness. It was as if the spacious plan of White Town had been deliberately conceived to repel the foul pressure of Black Town, always ready to spill upon them.

White Town dazzled with unnatural iridescence, rising above the
Indian town spreading malodorously about it. A paste of ground shell plastered all the walls and was set hard as zinc over the settlement, reflecting the sun like a mirror, luminous beneath the moon. So blinding at times was the effect of the
chunam
that many people now added some mud to the mixture, to lessen the strain on the eyes.

Already, from the window, Holwell could see a motley queue had formed to present petitions. With a start he looked at his pocket watch and, draining the last of the lime juice, walked down the corridor to the Mayor’s Court.

Upon his entrance the first plaintiff was called. Holwell settled at his desk, observing the room before him. The Clerk of the Court stood up. The recorders readied their quills like a row of expectant hens, heads down, tails up.

‘The Court will hear the case of Janet Jenkins versus Fabian Demonteguy.’

Holwell looked up with a frown from his papers. ‘This is a case for the Cutcherry. On what grounds is this woman allowed to appear here? Her name is Jaya Kapur, no longer Janet Jenkins. This court is for the use of Christian people and this woman is not Christian.’ The case, he saw from the document, concerned the custody of old Jaya’s granddaughter, Sati. The woman’s son-in-law wished to adopt her. He looked around but could see no sign of Fabian Demonteguy. Either the man did not know of this case, or had thought better than to defend himself against the flimsy allegations of an Indian woman, even if she was his mother-in-law.

Across the room the familiar figure of Old Jaya confronted him. As always, when faced with this immense and determined woman, the Chief Magistrate imagined the intractable body of India itself rearing up before him. He regretted that a past liaison with her daughter had put him in her grasp. His mind was suddenly filled with
discomforting
thoughts of Rita Demonteguy. Jaya’s stance was defiant, deviousness lit her eyes. Her breasts and belly merged to a single shapeless heap beneath her bedraggled clothes. He could not make
out what it was she wore, an outfit of Indian or European origin, or bits of both held together by brazenness. She appeared to have stepped forth from a circus. Soft pouches of flesh, resembling rudimentary breasts, settled on each side of her jaw. A hat with two feathers was perched on her hennaed hair like an unwieldy cockerel.

Behind her stood the girl, Sati, thin and sallow. Her breasts were flattened beneath a pink dress that appeared a size too small. Holwell stared in shock at the sudden maturity of her body. A feeling of panic rushed through him. Sati did not raise her eyes to him, but skulked in the shadow of her grandmother, half hidden from his gaze. She had not inherited the attributes of her mother, nor her father’s milky skin, but had nurtured instead a surly gene, ripe with the traits of dark ancestors. He looked at her in distaste. Why Demonteguy should wish to legally adopt her was beyond his comprehension. Then his gaze returned to Jaya Kapur and rage filled him.

‘Your Honour, she is here on the grounds of having had three European husbands,’ the Clerk of the Court responded.

‘But they are all dead,’ Holwell roared, the insolence of the woman choking his words. Across the room the cockerel trembled
belligerently,
as if it might take flight. ‘She is no more now than the sum of herself. State her full name for the record. Janet Jenkins
née
Jaya Kapur. From now on let her be called by her native name. Case dismissed.’

A murmur grew in the sticky air. He saw the cockerel pitch about. The face of old Jaya, impassive only a moment ago, now began to twist and work.

‘My name is Jenkins. First Walsh, then Locke. But Jenkins now. All these are English names. All these Englishmen, and others besides have planted their seeds in me. I have borne Christian men’s children. I am having every right to be here.’ Jaya stood with her feet firmly apart, hands on her hips, and stared at him. The Chief Magistrate glimpsed a set of grimy toes thrust about the thong of a sandal.

‘Case dismissed. I call you to appear before the Cutcherry.’ He swallowed hard in rage and fear.

He refused to hear the words she screeched as they dragged her away out of earshot. The girl was pulled out with her, like a toy on a string, gripping the end of her grandmother’s veil. She turned her head once, as if in appeal. For a moment her amber eyes met those of the magistrate and held him with a terrible force. He remembered again the way they had fastened upon him in the past. Then her thin body was sucked into the crowd and disappeared from the room.

‘Next case,’ Holwell called, relief flooding him at their departure.

*

Now, so many hours later on his veranda, the recollection of that scene still affected him. The memory of Jaya Kapur merged now with the black goddess and the wily river flowing before him. And that glimpse of the girl remained with him. Her yellow eyes and tortoiseshell hair, glossy as a cat’s, stayed with him like indigestible food. A wave of unease passed through him and he took a quick mouthful of claret.

Holwell ignored the sounds of Black Town’s evening bustle drifting to him across the Maratha Ditch and turned his attention to Fort William. The great bulk of the garrison stretched before him, seven hundred feet along the river, a town within a town. Day and night huge adjutant storks perched on its ramparts. Their silhouettes, massed against the moonlit sky, appeared like an army of gargoyles. The shutters of the Council chamber, where he spent a considerable amount of his time, gleamed dully beneath a cupola weighted down by birds. The Chief Magistrate’s gaze moved to a balcony of flowering shrubs before the Governor’s apartment. A hook of rage turned in him at the thought of Drake ensconced in those rooms. The man had no right to such luck. He sipped his wine and sniffed the heightened scent of the river, rustling through palm and mango trees. The damp air might fan pleasantly about him but pestilence blew on the Calcutta breeze. He wished it might find Roger Drake.
The sudden unravelling of so much emotion now thumped uncomfortably in his chest.

And still the day was not over. He had yet to face Demonteguy, if he chose to attend to the man’s invitation. A message had come from the Frenchman in the afternoon, suggesting they meet for a business discussion. It could only concern Jaya Kapur and the custody case, the Chief Magistrate presumed. At least in the matter of this invitation there appeared to be a choice. Except that choice was often a fond illusion. Things had a habit of deciding themselves in a confoundedly secret way.

W
ith an effort the Chief Magistrate pushed away the morning’s disquieting memory of Sati and the Governor’s tiresome visit that evening and reached again for his claret. Demonteguy’s invitation now filled his mind as a further dreary weight. Night had already settled upon Calcutta. Moths beat against the lamp, bullfrogs pumped throatily in the darkness. To one side of the Chief Magistrate’s garden the droop of palm fronds fanned darkly against the moonlit sky like black ostrich feathers. Behind them rose tamarind and mango trees. Screened from his sight by this thick growth lay the Maratha Ditch. The Ditch had been built long before to fortify Calcutta against attack. Now its sole function had become the demarcation of the city. On one side sat John Zephaniah Holwell, Chief Magistrate of White Town, replete with claret before the moon, while across the Ditch, only yards from his jasmine-filled garden, stretched the stinking miasma of Black Town.

The Chief Magistrate listened to the evening noise of Black Town slide into a lower key. The crying of babies had ceased. The smell of dung fires and frying onions, the voices of quarrelling women and the beating of a drum from a nearby temple drifted over to him. In the narrow alleys of thatched huts the cooking of numerous dinners had started. In his own area of Calcutta the trees glowed prettily with
fireflies. The adjutant birds had retired for the night and the jackals had taken their place. There were considerably fewer of these creatures roaming White Town than there had been in the early days of the Settlement. Then, they had streamed in from the jungle at will, picking Calcutta clean as a bone, frightening children and old people who were without weapons or canes. Now, a patrol of sepoys, accompanied by a team of sweepers, kept down the numbers with clubs and guns. The adjutant birds had at once grown fatter and more numerous, for the bodies of the jackals were thrown into the Maratha Ditch, where they could more easily be consumed.

As Holwell drained the last of his claret, thoughts of Demonteguy filled his mind again. He did not want anything to do with the Frenchman, yet he knew he would visit him as he demanded. At last he rose reluctantly from his chair, his legs carrying him forward with a will of their own. Demonteguy’s house, in an unfashionable area behind the jail near the Cross Roads, was a distance away. Followed by a retinue of servants, Holwell made his way to his palanquin. The runners squatting nearby chewing betel nut or tobacco, at once rushed to his assistance. The Chief Magistrate folded up his long body in a practised fashion, stowing himself into his palanquin. Soon he was lifted free of the ground and carried out through the gates of his compound. Torchbearers and guards ran before the litter to light the way and announce his importance to the world.

As the gates shut behind him, the Chief Magistrate noticed the moon streaming into the cemetery. For a moment he felt the same hesitation he knew Governor Drake must feel. Masonry of a grand and intricate nature was crammed tightly into the cemetery. The mausoleums, weathered black, resembled a decaying miniature town. Narrow lanes ran between edifices of a widely assorted nature, each larger than the next. Mughul domes augmented tombs that dwarfed a man, soaring Egyptian obelisks and sturdy cherubs topped massive sarcophagi. Grecian urns and Corinthian columns stood sentinel before many mausoleums. Flowering bushes and shady trees softened the place by day. Now the moon, shining down upon this third and
silent section of Calcutta, lit the mouldering mass of stone with unearthly life. In the trees the fireflies clustered aggressively, jostling for space in which to flash their eerie fairy light. The place took on a glowing nocturnal power that made the Chief Magistrate shiver. He did not believe in ghosts. Yet he huddled in his palanquin as flares were lit to guide his way. The flame-bearers ran ahead, lighting the road beside the ditch that led to Demonteguy’s house.

Why had Demonteguy asked him to call? And why was he, John Zephaniah Holwell, Chief Magistrate and Zamindar of Calcutta, acquiescing to the impertinent request?
Who
after all was
Demonteguy
but an upstart trader, an interloper? Few people even knew the nature of Demonteguy’s business. Probably he dealt in gems, sending diamonds on Dutch ships to be sold in Amsterdam. Holwell too had made a respectable amount of money in this manner. Why had he not simply told Demonteguy to see him in his rooms at the Courthouse? Anger drummed through Holwell, even though the choice to go was his.

There were two new runners in the Chief Magistrate’s employ who had yet to submit to the rhythm of the team. Within the palanquin Holwell endured the resulting discomfort in an uneven, bouncing trot, the confused nature of his thoughts only adding to his irritation. It was because of Rita that he found himself on this ridiculous journey. Why should the woman still have the power to draw him to her? Long before the coming of Demonteguy, he had used this same road to visit her regularly as she manoeuvred her way through widowhood. Against his will the old feeling of anticipation gripped his innards pleasantly. The road had acquired an illicit flavour drawn from his emotions in those days. He pushed out of his mind the uncomfortable scenes that had ended his relationship with Rita. He was never sure how much his wife had known about the affair. Even now he thought of the interlude as being her fault. Had Rosemary not been so intractable, he might never have strayed.

Soon they neared a bridge that crossed the Maratha Ditch into Black Town. The palanquin slowed to a halt behind the bony,
swaying rumps of buffalo returning late to Black Town from a White Town dairy. Fresh cowpats splattered the road, their ripe odour filling the Chief Magistrate’s nose. His liveried runners danced about to avoid them, dipping their torches to see the better. Within the palanquin Holwell was jostled around. At last the palanquin overtook the bullocks but was obstructed, this time by a funeral procession making its way to the burning ghat beyond the Maratha Ditch. Eventually the Chief Magistrate’s litter pushed past the mourners on the narrow road. A wave of sorrowful chanting reached Holwell as the bier drew alongside his palanquin. Since the Chief Magistrate sat on the shoulders of runners, as did the corpse, they met at an equal level. The Chief Magistrate stared at the white-shrouded figure strapped to the bier beneath garlands of flowers. For some moments they moved in unison, the stench of death pervading Holwell’s palanquin. The light from the flares of both parties waved wildly over the scene. The buffalo caught up with the palanquin once more and bellowed at Holwell’s rear.

‘Move on,’ the Chief Magistrate shouted, wondering why a funeral procession was about at such an hour. The burning of bodies was done before sundown. Perhaps the man was too poor to pay for a pyre – as was most of Calcutta – and was about to be dumped in the river.

Crowded amidst the buffalo and the ragged cortège, Holwell’s runners were forced to proceed as slowly as before. The corpse continued to travel in tandem with the palanquin, jostled about as much as the Chief Magistrate. Unlike the palanquin runners, the pallbearers were of varying heights and struggled to maintain equilibrium. The corpse lurched right then left, angled up for a time, then down.

‘Move aside,’ Holwell shouted, but with a row of oleander on one side and the ditch on the other, there was nowhere his runners could go. They looked at each other in consternation and began to shout at the funeral cortège. Such a show of disrespect for the dead angered the pallbearers, who heatedly argued their case. For a moment both
the Chief Magistrate and the corpse were brought to a stop in the midst of this altercation. Holwell saw that the twine strapping the body to the bier had worked itself loose and the corpse now lay at an awkward slant. Before he could raise his voice in alarm, the dead man slid suddenly forward, coming to rest at the edge of the palanquin, as if he would join the Chief Magistrate. Holwell reached out in desperation and felt the stiff flesh beneath his fingers.

The touch of death moved through him. He was constantly stalked by the spectre. Not only from the strange fluxes and fevers that came without warning upon a man, but in the very verdure of India. From the impenetrable jungle, alive with all manner of fantastical snares, to the great vines that climbed in his own garden, rearing before him like muscular snakes. Death waited silently everywhere.

‘Move on,’ Holwell screamed. ‘Move on.’

At last the palanquin runners broke free and took the centre of the road. The Chief Magistrate sat back in relief. The touch of the corpse still lingered on him, putrefaction filled his nose. The night was warm, but in his thick clothes Holwell was chilled by a weight of uncomfortable reflection. For a moment he could not deny that waxing and waning made an identical curve of each meagre life. King or pauper, humanity hurtled forward towards a single goal. In the secret hour of life’s midday, death was born in everyone. There was no way he could protest the matter; God snuffed out existence without a glance in this fetid place. With an effort the Chief Magistrate controlled himself. Although he was not yet prepared to take his place amongst the mausoleum population, he saw now why death chose to haunt him this evening. On this day many years ago, a son of three weeks had departed. His grave was so small it could be forgotten, and this the Chief Magistrate had done with alacrity. Tonight he had passed by the cemetery without even remembrance.

Everything had started from that death. Until then, Rosemary had fulfilled her wifely duties in an admirable manner. The house was replete in every way. Servants were managed efficiently, guests were
welcome and plentiful. Flowers graced every room. In her
demeanour
Rosemary reflected this decorum; never obtrusive but bound to her embroidery and a gentle sense of humour. To their conjugal life she passively acquiesced. All seemed satisfactory to the Chief Magistrate. Only Rosemary’s dislike of India could not be overcome. Although she made efforts to accept her life, the swiftness of death, seen so cruelly and repeatedly, froze her good intentions. The true sweep of this spectre must, in India, be stared at open-eyed. Some could look and some could not. Rosemary wished for innocence; this India could not provide.

Eventually, their son arrived, a large baby with blue eyes. Rosemary had appeared complete, the future seemed assured. Yet after three weeks she had awoken Holwell in the middle of the night. The baby screamed, flailing small arms against her breast. She begged him to get the doctor. He had taken a horse and gone himself. The doctor was on furlough and his replacement was a casual man who said such vociferation was the way of babies. ‘Wind in the stomach. Give it some rhubarb. I will call in the morning,’ he said, and went back to sleep. Holwell returned with this news to Rosemary, much relieved within himself.

She heard him out silently, the child in her arms, before she said quietly, ‘The baby is dead.’

The casket was tiny and the grave, under the shade of a tree, a trivial, flowery affair. It was just somewhere Rosemary went each day, as she might have visited her whist group. Yet, so small a death still had its way of working subterraneously. Rosemary closed her door to him. Embroidery lay idle in her hands. Servants pilfered and disappeared, food became inedible. Guests no longer came. After some time she rallied, as if a disease had run its course, but things were never the same again. She had moved beyond his grasp. Soon after this he had come to know Rita. He had handled the probate of her late husband’s will. The estate was minuscule but included the house on the perimeter of White Town where they had lived. Rita’s matters were soon settled, but the consolation she demanded for
widowhood coincided with his own needs. That she sought this consolation with more gentlemen than himself he was ignorant of at the time.

The Chief Magistrate eventually passed the jail and entered a less fashionable area of White Town as he neared Demonteguy’s home. The palanquin came to rest and the Chief Magistrate uncurled himself. Before him Demonteguy’s small house stood in darkness, lit only by the moon. At this hour most homes in the Settlement were already extravagantly illuminated. Perhaps, thought the Chief
Magistrate
, the Frenchman saved on candles. He stepped from his palanquin and looked about, his pulse behaving erratically.
Demonteguy
had indicated the meeting concerned some lucrative business, yet Holwell knew the reason he had come to the Frenchman’s house had nothing to do with this information. There were chunks of life that could not be got rid of but floated, like great icebergs, at the back of the mind. Occasionally the blast from that nether region broke through a forgotten door. Such a moment now seized the Chief Magistrate, rooting him to the ground. The image of Rita, naked beneath a négligé, pushed into his mind. Some invisible and arbitrary force seemed suddenly unleashed upon him.

He saw now that within the house a few candles were burning. There appeared to be a gathering, sitting silently in the dark. Why had Demonteguy called him for a business discussion when he was not alone? Was this a prayer meeting? Holwell frowned in annoyance as he stepped through the open door. His eyes searched out and settled on Rita. The candles threw distorted shadows on to the wall behind her. Her breasts spilt from her dress, as if offered to him upon her palms to do with as he wished. The memory of those golden orbs, quivering just above his chin as she sat astride him, would never leave his mind. The dark room continued to tremble about him, moving with the candle flames. He tried to step back but a servant ran forward, forcing him inside. People turned at the disturbance. Holwell sat down to escape further notice, discomfort boiling through him. He appeared trapped in some ritualistic
meeting. Emily Drake, Lady Russell and Dumbleton, the Notary, he saw now were amongst the audience. He remembered his collision in the courthouse with Dumbleton just that morning. Soon, in the darkness, he spotted other familiar faces. Why were these people assembled in Demonteguy’s home? The Chief Magistrate’s eyes settled once more on Rita, and met her stony expression. At last he spotted Demonteguy and saw that the Frenchman observed him with surprise.