By Eastern windows (15 page)

His eyes moved along the lines in an expression that said he had more than a suspicion that a few of them were freely indulging in the latter.

‘But any soldier found to be in possession of opium will suffer the severest punishment the Army can give him. You have all seen the effects of opium on the Indian armies. In battle it inspires a false courage that leads to a short period of brutal frenzy followed by staggering imbecility.’

Sergeant McGinnis's face was puce with shame as he listened to the captain addressing the men slowly and distinctly with a determined edge to his voice.

‘You will drill until you can all march on the parade ground as one man, in perfect synchronisation. You will have musket practice until you can load and refire three rounds inside one minute and not three. You will, if nothing else, be a credit to this regiment of the British Army.’

He turned away, leaving the sergeant to dismiss the men who stood staring after him as he strode from the parade ground with his junior officers.

‘Bloody Breda!
 
Whoever said he was pukka?’

‘Aye, well … I reckon there’s something brewing.’

‘
Silence! Shut your blethering gobs!
’ Sergeant McGinnis had come out of his shock and shame and was glaring at the men like a demon on fire.

 
‘Ye lazy shower o' buggers! Ye couldn't even
pretend
to be soldiers, could ye? Ye couldn't help out a poor old sarge who’s always been good to ye. Oh, God! I wish I was dead! Dead and no longer in charge of ye sods!
  
Almost six years in Hindooo land – and where's it got me? I'll never make Regimental Sergeant-Major now!’

Emotion cracked his roaring voice. ‘Well if my career's ruined I'm taking ye lot with me! Ye needn't worry about drills or anything else because I'm not going to give them to ye! I'm going to do what the captain should've done – I'm going to get one of the regiment's cannons – and then I'm going to blow ye all to buggery!’

He looked at the men with a sudden clearness, and saw them all regarding him with patient eyes. They all knew his bark was far worse than his bite.

*

Colaba was one of the small islands very close to the shore of Bombay and linked to the mainland by a causeway over which pedestrians and carriages could travel. Every day Lachlan rode out to spend most of his time in the cantonments of Colaba watching the men of his company in training.

Other company captains had heard of Macquarie's lecture and how he was reported to be now leaning very hard on his men. Not to be outdone, they quickly followed suit.

For four weeks the men trained, the men drilled, the men sweltered.

And still no sign of the monsoon.

Three days before the end of June, General Balfour and a brigade of staff officers, together with Major Whitelocke, the new commandant of the Calicut forces, had the pleasure of watching the companies of the 77th's first Battalion marching on parade with superb synchronisation, all commands being followed with a snap and precision that was breathtaking.

Balfour was a vision of happiness as Major Whitelocke praised the 77th's ‘
magnificent
’ soldierly performance

‘Yes, yes,’ Balfour agreed happily. ‘The best in India.’

The following day the 77th sailed out of Bombay harbour, just as the monsoon arrived, and the rains fell.

SEVEN

‘Rain!’

The soldiers of the 77th stood on the deck of the
Endeavour
holding up their smiling faces to what had been a furnace of a sky.
 
The monsoon had arrived at last.

For six days Jane groaned in her cabin as the ship rolled on its way down the Malabar Coast. Whenever the drumming of the rain eased she could hear the cheerful voices of the men, and sometimes the voices of women.

All ‘official’ wives of soldiers were allowed to travel with the Army when a regiment was moved to a new settlement, especially in India where the girls would have been rejected by their own people for marrying out of their caste.

Aboard the ship the soldiers' wives were housed apart from the men and rarely strayed from their own privacy below decks. But on arrival at Calicut, two weeks after leaving Bombay, Jane at last saw the small group of Indian girls that some of the soldiers had fallen in love with and married; delicate and beautiful girls with slender limbs, soft features, eyes black and serene, and not one could be over the age of eighteen.

Jane thought them all very young, although she herself was only twenty-one.

‘Where do the soldiers meet these girls?’ she asked Lachlan in a curious whisper, then gave a slow ‘Ohhh, I see,’ when he explained that some were servant girls who had been lured out of their caste by the twinkle in a British blue eye – but most were
Daughters of Music
– dancing girls who, under the care of their respective
duennas
were hired to dance at European entertainments, but often escaped their
duennas
to some moonlight garden to hear more of the romantic whispers of a lonely soldier.

Dancing girls!
 
Jane looked at them now, and understood their grace. Everything about them was graceful, and all salaamed shyly to the only ‘Memsahib’ on the ship.
  

Jane smiled and salaamed back; and then turned and looked towards the coconut palms and white beaches of Calicut.

*

The military station at Calicut was four miles along the coast from the town. It was composed of a series of palm-thatched huts formed into streets, shaded by coconut trees. Some distance up a small hill beyond the huts were the officers' bungalows, bordered by banyan and jacaranda trees. Lachlan and Jane found their bungalow to be the best of all, having a large bedroom, and surrounded by a beautiful garden.

Jane explored her new surroundings. The veranda completely encircled the house and as she walked around it she could see high beautiful hills in the background, green dappled country at each side, and from her front door, the blue sea could be seen in the distance.

‘We're going to be happy here,’ she told Lachlan.

And she was right, for thus began the happiest period of their lives; and it was in that quiet and peaceful military oasis in Calicut that Jane Macquarie truly fell in love with India, and Lachlan fell even more in love with Jane.

*

Every day the rain fell, filling the air with the smells of wet earth, rejuvenating the land, refreshing the spirit. Hot winds blew through the night, calming almost to a breeze by morning. But the southwest monsoon was passing away from the coast of Malabar and travelling north-eastwards where it would finally exhaust itself.

By September the rainy season was almost over and the inhabitants of Calicut faced nine months of guaranteed sunshine.

The first friend Jane had made on her arrival was a mama-monkey who had taken up residence in a tree behind the house, at the far edge of the garden. She had a cute, cheeky face, and was very noisy as she chattered to her tiny offspring, instructing him in the art of jumping from branch to branch.

As soon as the mama-monkey saw Jane she paused, and sat for while looking at the girl with curious eyes, scratching her ear lazily and appearing irresolute as to how to respond. Then, after a chatter with herself, she decided to ignore the human, turning her face away in an arrogant manner and carried on with her parental instructions.
 

Jane nicknamed her ‘Fawn’ because of her colour. Day after day she watched Fawn teaching her young progeny, swinging from branch to branch herself and showing him how it was done; cuddling and kissing him when he was timid, encouraging him with cheerful chatter, then beating him angrily when he refused to budge.

These beating sessions always ended with Fawn sitting with a hairy hand to her brow and directing at Jane a hail of chatter about what Jane could only suppose to be the difficulties of parenthood.

Flowers being the delight of all Indian maidens, Jane's little maid, Marianne, ensured that a basket of freshly gathered flowers, collected in the cool of the morning, refreshed the Macquaries' dining table from breakfast until supper. And never once did they lie down to sleep without the exotic fragrance of a bowl of some richly scented flowers by their bed.

The only real entertaining they did now was on a Sunday, when Jane, being the only officer's wife on the station, welcomed all the other officers to dine throughout the day at the Macquaries' table.

Sunday became the one day in the week when the house was lively and full. Their fare was a mixture of West and East: chickens, which were plentiful in Malabar, lamb, vegetables, curries and an abundance of rice platters dressed in a delicately oriental manner. The long leisurely meal always ended with the ritual of sipping a glass of milk, for all had learned from their first week in India that a glass of milk sipped slowly destroyed all evidence of spices on the breath and refreshed the mouth.

Friday evenings were always spent at the Brigadier's house, sampling what Jane called `his sad stew.’ Although the Brigadier invariably cheered them up later by singing songs to them in his beautiful tenor voice.

Life was good, very good.
 
Although Fawn – Jane's monkey friend – was becoming far too familiar and cheeky, Lachlan decided one day when himself and Jane returned from an early morning walk to find Fawn sitting languidly amidst the cushions of Lachlan's favourite cane chair and guzzling a bottle of his favourite beer imported by the Army from England.

All his stern commands to Fawn, ordering her outside to her own abode, went unheeded. She shook her head stubbornly and guzzled on.

Bappoo was called.

Bappoo arrived, smiling and cheerful as ever, but as soon as he saw Fawn he let out a shout and clapped his hands angrily.

Fawn sprang off the chair and scurried out of the house, but not before she had managed to grab a handful of nuts from a bowl on a small sidetable.

As time went by, Fawn and her little monkey were often to be found lounging on the veranda of the house as if they owned it – Fawn lolling back on one of the cane chairs chattering to herself while her son, more daring now, swung on the wooden rail of the veranda or hopped on to the roof to sit and stare at the sea.

Only the house itself was banned to Fawn: the usual wire netting covered the windows to keep her and all other monkeys out. Yet all of Fawn's days were spent seeking cunning ways to get inside for more beer.

Fawn's new-found taste for beer was so lustful that whenever Lachlan sat on the veranda leisurely drinking a bottle, she would attempt to seduce it from him by sitting with her mouth pursed in the shape of a kiss, clicking at him lovingly.

When this ceremony of devotion failed to move him, she would run away angrily and a short time later he would find himself and the veranda being pelted with coconuts from the advantage of a high tree.

The third time Fawn had done this, Lachlan had been so furious he had lifted the coconuts and pelted them back, and by some fluke had hit her and knocked her from the tree, with no real injury. After that she proved a coward when fighting the white man, and now only pelted handfuls of dust.

But mainly she preferred to purse her lips and click at him passionately, until he eventually lost patience and handed the bottle over. In this way she always succeeded in getting the second half of any bottle of beer he was foolish enough to drink on the veranda.

*

Fawn was not the only friend Jane made in Calicut. Accompanied by Marianne she often wandered down to the huts in the coconut groves and discovered that all the Hindu girls were as attentive to bathing and cleanliness as Marianne, for to the Hindus, purity of the body is connected with purity of the soul. They washed themselves every morning in scented water from special water-jars that were filled from the river in the evening and scattered flowers on the surface from which the fragrance was seeped during the overnight marinade.

They also took great care to keep themselves as attractive as possible. Their dress was simple, saris of the softest shades and silks draped around their slender bodies. All wore at least one pearl in their ears, and coloured bangles adorned their wrists and ankles; but it was the rings they wore on their fingers that fascinated Jane the most.

All wore one particular large ring on the middle finger which looked like a glistening silver stone, but was actually a mirror, enabling them to continually check their faces and ensure that no smudge of dust or dirt had blemished their clean olive skins. And so fascinated was Jane with this very clever ring, that one Hindu girl shyly took the ring off her own finger and offered it to the young Memsahib.

Jane flushed crimson, ‘Oh, please, no, I couldn’t accept, it would deprive you!’ But the expression on the other girls' faces told her it would be a great insult if she refused.

Marianne whispered to Jane the Eastern proverb: ‘
Presents are the hand of friendship
.’

‘Ruchira be very happy,’ the girl said shyly, holding out the ring.

Jane smiled and took the ring, slipped it on her finger, held it up and admired herself in its mirror, then declared it to be the
sweetest
gift she had ever been given and would treasure it always.