My Sweet Folly (23 page)

Robert had chosen the only hotel he knew in London, a stuffy haunt of clergymen and scholars. It was little changed from his Etonian days, when his tutor and keeper had brought him into town for edifying visits to the museums and galleries. There would be no one to recognize Robert there; the audacious gentlemen in the service of John Company were hardly the sort to frequent Hubbard’s Hotel in Clifford Street.

The beginning of the journey from Solinger had harrowed him, an act of will and domination over the demons in his head. He had not gone straight toward his destination; had taken no route at all, simply begun riding alone in any chance direction, losing himself among anonymous village inns and towns for a sennight, finally coming upon the Great North Road and turning toward London amid the coaches and wagons, loaded donkeys, and goosegirls with their flocks.

Yet now, as he finished a turtle soup, half a roast duck, a cutlet, a fresh salad, and a chocolate cream provided from the hotel kitchen, he began to believe that his mind was sufficiently clear to begin a rational inquiry into what was happening to him.

His diaries from India lay before him, twelve volumes of densely written notes and sketches. He was not a neat scribe. His own handwriting gave him a headache, and his vague notions of one day producing a book had always evaporated when he contemplated transcribing the scribble into something organized. It had always seemed more interesting to investigate the next temple or teacher; the next Sanskrit poem; to wonder at the ancient dreams and strange phenomena; to walk the multicolored borderland between purity and dirt that was India.

But he had no other place to begin. He knew the volumes contained something important.

What?

He sat back in his chair, staring into the candle flame. He could not trust his memories. Or his friends, such as they were.

During his farcical years in the political service, plots and intrigues had abounded. His colleagues had conspired with princes and spied upon everyone from illegal missionaries to Pegu ponies, but Robert had never paid serious attention to any of that. No one confided in him, or gave him any responsibility, which had suited him admirably. His job had never been defined, beyond a vague directive to “collect information on the engineering of the major buildings and temples in the locale.” He had never even known which “locale” he was to scrutinize, so he had simply explored whatever ground took his fancy, kept his notes, and assumed that if someone wished to see them, they would ask. In truth, his reputation as a careless buffoon was not undeserved; he had no patience for sober and disciplined pursuits such as writing reports to his superiors. At least his wanderings had kept him out of the compound, and away from Phillippa.

At the thought of her, a curl of dread and loathing tightened in his belly. He listened to the silence in the room, waiting.

She did not speak. His chamber was a quiet one, at the back of the hotel. Through the shuttered windows, he heard only the sound of pigeons gurgling on the sill.

“Are you gone?” he sneered aloud.

A drop of hot wax slid down the side of his candle, puddling in the holder.

He made a growl and flipped open his first volume. The entries began so long ago that he hardly thought there could be anything of use there, hut he was determined to examine every detail. With pen and paper ready to note whatever seemed pertinent, he began to read.

By half past midnight, he regretted ever having started. It was a humiliating experience. Amongst the observations on Indian culture and religion were the shards and fragments of his life, the whole anguished tale of his marriage, beginning with his first wild infatuation with the girl his father had brought out from England for him to marry, complete with such effusions as
O God she is the sweetest, loveliest creature in Heaven or Earth, I cannot comprehend a word she says for staring at her.
Would that he had paid more attention to her conversation. But he had been consumed with jealousy, filling whole pages with entries about how he would call out Captain More if the devil kept it up, or put a glove across Balfour’s cheek for his impertinence.

Robert squeezed his eyes shut and groaned. What a greenhorn. He had barely turned twenty, but surely that was old enough to have more sense.

He could not even bring himself to read the page written the night before he had proposed. Robert had rebelled against his father all his life, but in that one fatal moment he had cooperated gladly. In spite of the unspoken understanding that the Duke of Alcester’s daughter had traveled out to Calcutta not only to visit her doting godfather but to marry into the Cambourne fortune, he was frantically afraid that she would turn him down. Any eligible British female at all in India was feted and courted with high intensity, and Phillippa had been so beautiful and nobly bred, so truly charming, that the fervor rose to impossible heights. Everyone admired her, adored her, was her devoted slave for eternity. He saw now how it had gone to her head, how she had come to live for the worship and attention, but then he had known only that he must vie for her against the competition of men who seemed to be everything he was not.

But she had said yes.

YES!!!!
he had written across the whole of a page.

He turned past that and skimmed a few more pages of high-minded ecstasy about her. Then there was a long interval, nearly a year represented by one blank space, and the serious entries on Hindu cults began.

Robert expelled a slow sigh and rubbed his eyes. He supposed there must have been some happiness, but he could not remember it now. She had not been cold; she would kiss him and tease him prettily until he grew so agitated that he could hardly think, but he was shy with her—afraid of her, frankly—afraid that he loved her so much that he would lose himself in it. At first he had been exhilarated by complying with her requests, hurrying to do whatever she bid, elated when he won her smile. But slowly he had begun to believe he should not allow himself to be consumed by this. It was alarming.
She
was alarming; an aristocratic English girl, exacting in her many feminine needs.

Ah, but then she would kiss him. He did remember that. As long as he responded ardently, as long as he told her, over and over, how beautiful she was, as long as he declared his devotion in fresh and glowing terms, she rewarded him with passionate caresses. And yet, after each avowal of his love, she would look up at him with a faint air of expectation, as if he had not said quite enough, or quite the right thing, and she was waiting.

It began to chill him, that pregnant look. Hidden in it was a threat and a misgiving—that some other man could love her better—that she had mistaken him.

Robert shook his head. He marked his place and rang the bell, summoning a sleepy bootboy to his door. He ordered coffee and fried potatoes, for a bit of a snack, then on consideration, added a request for toasted cheese, a minced pie, and an orange. He would have enjoyed rice and a good curried stew, in the mulligatawny style, but Hubbard’s did not cater to East Indian tastes, and he had no intention of calling undue attention to himself. He felt safe ordering from the hotel’s kitchen.

His early notes were simple enough; he could see nothing in them of particular interest—short passages on the great Hindu triad: Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, Shiva the Destroyer, about as sophisticated as a schoolboy’s essay. Anyone who scratched the surface of religion in India would discover this stuff. It was not until he had become acquainted with Srí Ramanu that he had begun to penetrate the Hindu philosophy and its views of life and suffering. But long before he had grasped anything of
karma
or
maya
or
moksa,
he had discovered a great deal about suffering.

He could almost feel pity for the bewildered boy he had been—pathetic fool, floundering in love and writing grave descriptions of Indian ritual. His first mention of Phillippa, after the blank space and religious reports, was the single line,
She is still afraid. God help me.

For Phillippa, he had discovered after their wedding—in spite of her passionate kisses, her heated caress—Phillippa was afraid of childbirth. Or so she said. She would lie down with him; slowly her modesty lessened and she answered his desire with her own; she let him go farther and farther until he could touch her, kiss her anywhere. She would pant and arch and reach for him, pull up her own gown and draw his body against her until she died blissfully in his embrace, but he was never allowed the same release. Any attempt to enter her met instant stiffness and panic. She would roll away and weep, accusing him of being unfeeling.

She drove him mad with it. He could not speak of such things, he could not reason with her or threaten her. So he would silently retreat, leaving her asleep in her bed and walking out into the bazaars and alleyways to cool his blood.

He flicked past the pages, forcing himself to read each one. Here was his first meeting with Srí Ramanu, carefully recorded from one of those uneasy night walks.
Ramanu perceives in my soul a deep distress,
he had written earnestly. Robert rolled his eyes to the ceiling. At the sound of a knock, he gladly marked his place and closed the volume.

His food gave him an excuse to rise from his chair and leave the diary shut. But he had revived the memory now; he could not escape it. He thought of the night he had lost his head, driven by Phillippa’s delicious body and blind lust. When he had felt the shudder of ecstasy come over her, he had not rolled away; he had not obeyed her hands pushing him off. He could not. The more she had fought him, the more despair and fury had made him fierce—he had thrust himself in, deaf to her cries, handled her as the soldiers handled their whores, without mercy.

He had gone to the bazaars that night with her hysterical weeping still ringing in his ears. Srí Ramanu had seemed to find him—certainly Robert had not been looking for the
guuruu.
He had been on the edge of tears himself, in no state to conduct rational investigations or interviews. But Srí Ramanu had only bid him rest and be still. Robert had knelt, while Ramanu sat with his legs crossed in the fashion of yogis. And after a long time, sitting there watching Srí Ramanu in silent contemplation, Robert had felt strangely lifted out of himself. It was as if the anger and doubt and emotions boiling in him had died down, burned away to ashes by the
guuruu’s
luminous gaze. He could feel tears running down his face, but he felt no grief or guilt, or even any very clear sense of himself at all; only a great stillness and radiance from everything about him.

How long ago and impossible it seemed now. Robert did not have to look in the diary to know what he had written after that night.
Srí Ramanu is an extraordinary man.

Perhaps, Robert thought, as he ate fried potatoes and toast, he should have joined Ramanu’s disciples after all. Let his hair grow long and don a loincloth and live in that celestial radiance for the rest of his life.

But he could no more believe in it then than he could now. He remembered the experience with an intense clarity, but he could never repeat it or even accept its ultimate reality, though Phillippa had accused him many times of aspiring to become a Hindu mystic. He did not deny it, or blame her for holding him back; he would have if it had been in his power. But he could not cut himself off from the world, from his earthly dreams and passions. Even when they tore his soul to shreds, he could not let them go.

And so he had studied instead, committing Srí Ramanu’s teachings and rituals to paper, where the brilliance of that night became no more than scribbles of ink. He had followed rumors and stories, observing esoteric cults and tracking them down with a kind of yearning fixation, a hope he never even admitted to himself, that in one of them he would find the way back to that intangible sensation, that one transcendent night with Srí Ramanu. He watched wild dances and sat enveloped in smoke and incense, writing every detail.

Then he went home to Phillippa, who was fervently interested in his advancement and wanted to invite all the important officers and supervisors to balls and picnics. All the men he loathed. She would not let him into her bed again. But she would kiss him still, and beg prettily to be allowed to give a ball. She so wanted them to recognize his ability—he was being overlooked; he was too modest; in England it was expected that a gentleman would entertain on a scale appropriate to his station in life. Her adored papa the duke was so very disappointed in him.

Robert sipped his coffee with a saturnine smile. Oh, his station in life. He opened the diary again, peeling the orange with his thumb. Twice he had gone to his father to borrow against his allowance for Phillippa’s balls. Twice had been two times too many. She did not seem to realize that his real station in life was enslavement to the Company and his father, to accounts and the Cambourne repute; or understand how deeply he hated it all. He did not truly realize it himself until he had stood before his father the second time, and heard how he must learn to control his wife, for as charming as she was, she was a little too saucy, and beginning to make a spectacle of herself in the stiff upper echelons of Calcutta society.