Zemindar (120 page)

Let me have a line before we set off. They say it
will be 11 o’clock by the time we make a move, and
that means 2 in the afternoon at the earliest; so let it
be many lines. Did you know that Charles is not coming home with us? He is accompanying us as far as Allahabad to see us safely on our way and then returns to fight with Major Barrow’s Volunteer Cavalry. Laura.

My dear,

It is I that should ask your forgiveness. Yet, woman
dear, is not all this beating of the breast between two
humans a little unfastidious? Let us forget the wrongs,
real or imaginary, we have done each other and start
afresh. For you are right; we have little time to squander.

My dear, if you but knew the joy with which I read
that first note from you, or the effort it cost me to
respond as brusquely as I did. My confidence was
badly shaken, you see; I had to be sure you wanted
to see me for more than some silly feminine desire for
seemliness or to smooth out your own rumpled self-esteem. Day by day, as you have persisted in your
dogged way to chip away at my carapace of misunderstanding, anger and hurt, you have displayed yourself
to me thoroughly. I know you love me, Laura, but
what are we to do about it?

For a time (you may find it difficult to believe) I
even tried to see myself living the sort of life you could
share with a husband in England. I tried to persuade
myself I could do it. I envisioned a decorous and comfortable villa, with elms, clipped hedges and neat
lawns; an office somewhere, perhaps, to which I would
repair each day, returning at evening to the embraces
of suburban domesticity. Or better yet, a farm where
I could at least have my horses and a day uncabined
by the clock. I tried to convince myself I could learn
to make do with a life lacking all those things that
have made my life out here worthwhile. It was very
hard on Tod and Ishmial, who felt the edge of my
tongue every time I spoke to them.

At last I realized I could not do it. I will never make
a responsible English business man, nor yet a comfortable English squire.

Laura, I have been as I am now, have lived in the
same way for too long to adjust to English life. I will
not try. Were I to do so, to try and fit your mould,
your idea or vision of what makes for happiness, I
would not succeed in subduing my own preferences or inclinations; only in perverting them. We would end in hatred, and I would by far sooner lose you than learn to loathe you. Memory is an inadequate comforter at best, but at least it can be sweet memory. Oliver.

Toddy-Bob arrived with this last epistle on the next morning, just as Kate, Jessie and I were admiring a carriage, shabby but roadworthy, that had been placed at our disposal by the authorities to take us to Cawnpore.

‘Well … it’s better’n a
doolie
, there’s no gainsayin’ that!’ Tod agreed dubiously, as we asked him to examine the new conveyance. ‘I’ll just cast my blinkers over the axles and springin’ and that … make sure that it’ll ’old together for you.’ And he disappeared under the sagging body of the equipage.

Two horses had also been provided, country animals, shaggy, wild of eye and badly matched in size. These, too, were carefully examined by our friend, with many sniffs of disdain and impolite reflections on their ancestry, but eventually passed as ‘prob’ly’ capable of getting us to our destination. He then had a few words with the native driver, compounded about equally of threats and promises, and finished with a brief
resumé
of the power, importance and wealth of the
Lat-Sahib
of Hassanganj, whose women we were declared to be and to whom the unhappy driver was now directly responsible for our welfare.

‘Doesn’t do to let ’em think you ain’t got no gentleman to look out for you,’ he explained. ‘They got no respec’ for females on their own, like. I’ll make it my business to keep an eye on you, drop by now and then, and remind ’im generally of ’is proper place.’

Contrary to the pessimistic expectation expressed in my note to Oliver of the previous day, the march to Cawnpore began on time that morning. The families and the sick occupied the mid-section of the column but, even so, it was not too long after midday when we began to move out of the Alum Bagh park. There had been rain during the night, which had left the world fresh and sparkling, but which had also softened the ground on either side of the narrow, unmetalled roadway we were to follow, and our driver was exhorted sternly to drive in the very middle of the track or risk losing his vehicle for ever. He salaamed his compliance to this excellent suggestion to the officer giving it; then, with a great cracking of his whip over the unmindful ears of his lethargic steeds, shouted us into motion.

On the slow drive out of the park and down the first mile or so of the open road, our way was lined by the officers and men who were to remain at the Alum Bagh until Sir Colin’s return. Time after time, strange hands were thrust into the carriage windows to wish us good luck and God speed; there were donations of fruit, of chocolate and a whisky bottle full of milk stoppered with grass, and a bundle of very out-of-date newspapers. ‘Good luck!’ ‘God be with you, ladies!’ ‘Safe home now and no harm to yez!’ ‘Tell ’em at home we’re still fighting, ma’am!’ ‘The best of good fortune to all you ladies!’ Thus, each in his own way, the men bade us farewell, and suddenly, above the creak of cartwheels, the tramp of feet, the yells of bullock-drivers and the thud of hooves on soft earth, the eerie note of the pipes was borne to us from a distance. As we came to a halt in the first of a long series of delays, the shrill notes grew louder, until the pipeband of the 93rd, kilts a-swing, spats twinkling, bonnet plumes waving, marched in fine order past us to take their place in the column.

‘Aye, ’tis a braw fine sight the laddies make!’ Jessie smiled with national pride, holding Pearl up to the window to watch them pass.

Trying to find a comfortable corner among the broken springs of the carriage seat, I felt a deadening return of the old fear and anxiety, which I had almost forgotten during the few days of letter-writing and dreaming beneath the trees of the Alum Bagh. We were still a long way from safety. Fighting, so we had been told, had once again broken out in Cawnpore, that sinister city in which we hoped for an incongruous refuge. We knew no details, except that Sir Colin and an advanced detachment were making all speed to the town; but no accurate knowledge was needed to breed alarm in us. Behind us the pandies were now in possession of the Residency. They had destroyed the semaphore and had been seen through fieldglasses capering and dancing jigs of triumph on the roof of the Resident’s House. This last piece of information filled us all with sadness; it was a bitter thought that all our endurance and suffering had found its termination in the derision of an enemy that had never managed to subdue us. Fortunately, we did not learn until much later that the first action taken by the invaders of the old entrenchment was the desecration of our graves.

The first day’s march was only fifteen miles, and, since the column was almost twelve miles in length, the vanguard had encamped very shortly after the rearguard had begun to march. Two or three hours after our departure, when one of the unexplained halts found our carriage on a sweep of curving road crowning a fair eminence in the flat countryside, we were afforded a view of the progress of the column both before and behind us, and could form an appreciation of what it must have looked like to the vultures hovering hopefully in the cool blue above.

On either side of the road swampy grassland had disintegrated into a morass of mud, through which struggled the infantry: the Scots, with their white spats now as brown as the mud they marched through; the 32nd (‘Our Men’ as we always considered them) hardly better clothed than when they left the Residency, but no less dogged; the loyal sepoys of the Old Garrison, mingling in their rags with the smartly uniformed natives of the relief; the sailors of the
Shannon
, easily discernible in their blue and white, swinging smartly through the mud, to show themselves more capable of soldierly endurance than any mere soldier. Flanking the infantry on both sides of the road, the cavalry cantered, whirled and trotted in the first energy of a short march, lances gleaming, pennons fluttering, horses frisking.

Thus guarded and guided, the cause of all the martial concern crept along the broken road, mile upon slow mile in an unending stream of carriages, carts, landaus and broughams, of bullock-wagons, ammunition tumbrils and guns, of
doolies
, palanquins and red-curtained ambulances, of oxen and elephants, camels, mules and donkeys, of goats, sheep and pariah dogs and the gaudily curtained litters and carts that housed, so Jessie told me, the compliant females of the bazaar.

Coolies, cooks, grooms,
ayahs
and grass-cutters trotted between the wheels and the hooves; vendors appeared miraculously from the fields with fresh milk, eggs, sweetmeats, embroidered slippers and glass bangles for sale. Whenever the column halted, from the carts of the bazaar artisans came the peaceful, domestic sounds of the tinsmith’s hammer, the carpenter’s saw or the cobbler’s mallet on the last. I gathered that nor war nor tumult could turn the Indian craftsman from his trade.

That night we slept uncomfortably in the carriage, no attempt being made to pitch a camp, and were on the move again by seven the next morning.

The atmosphere in which the column moved that second day, both physical and emotional, was very different to the almost joyous release with which it had progressed on the first day. To begin with, we set out with the disquieting intelligence that we had over forty miles to cover, for Cawnpore must be within sight when we halted.

The cavalry no longer cavorted in the springing fields, nor left the line to take a pot shot at a partridge or a hare. The infantry hugged the road more closely, many of the Old Garrison limping now in unbroken boots, and the grass-cutters, plying their scythes for animal fodder as they moved, kept carefully within range of a dash to the road and safety.

By noon we were again within the sound of gunfire, and the dull far roar, still unexplained, filled us anew with anxiety. During the many protracted halts, we left the carriage and tried to discover what was taking place ahead of us, but were met only with rumours and counter-rumours. There was talk of despatches arriving from Cawnpore, appealing for help as so often not long before we had ourselves appealed for help. The small force left to hold the city until our coming was said to be besieged by Tantia Topee, the Nana Sahib’s chief lieutenant; the bridge of boats, our sole approach to the city, was under attack … had been cut … been set on fire … totally destroyed. We would have to turn back; we would have to take another road; we were to be attacked at nightfall … no, we were to return to the Alum Bagh.

But we did not turn back nor take another route. Neither were we attacked.

Hour after hour through the slow miles, the incredible caravan moved stolidly onward. Now we were choked with the dust of our own passage. Every eye smarted, every voice was hoarse, every throat constricted and raw. Above us a great cloud of sunfilled motes obscured the sky and, for a mile on either side of the road, the green of field, cane-brake and copse was yellowed by the fine dry powder. In the carriage we muffled our faces in scarves and shawls, but nothing kept out the dust. We had prayed that the rain would keep off for the sake of the men marching beside us; now we prayed for its falling—and for the same reason.

I could not be surprised that Toddy-Bob had not managed to find me and deliver Oliver’s next letter, and in a way I was glad that he had not done so. I had something to look forward to when we reached Cawnpore; meanwhile, the discomforts and anxieties of the journey were rendered bearable by anticipation.

Very late that night we at last halted, having covered thirty-eight exhausting miles. Cawnpore, so they told us, lay several miles further on. Through the hours of darkness, the guns pounded and thundered in familiar concatenation. Sometimes a rocket soared into the murky heights of the night or for a brief moment a bursting shell would illuminate the strange landscape. Movement and noise, the shuffle and stir of thousands of men and animals continued until dawn. We were too tired, too dry, dusty and uncomfortable to do more than doze for a few moments at a time. Only Pearl, most blessedly imperturbable of children, slept on Jessie’s knees, her small face streaked with dust, her hair dark with its dirt.

Morning, when at last it came, was again dulled by the haze of dust, which still hovered above us despite the heavy dew of the night.

We set off again, I ill-tempered through cramp, fatigue and inactivity. I would have walked beside the carriage for a while to exercise my limbs and soothe my mind, but the condition of the roadway and the verges, after the passage of so many animals and men, was foul beyond belief.

The day dragged by, more wearisome than the last, as we again experienced the lengthy halts, the noise, the dust and the flies.

Every bone ached, every muscle protested, and the skin of our backs was raw from the ceaseless rub against the hard leather upholstery. To grumble at our lot would have been a welcome and understandable relief, but that day we travelled in company with a horsedrawn ambulance. The sight of the bloodily bandaged stumps protruding from the curtain, the sound of the groans that met us as we halted, forced us to long-suffering silence. We were too jaded to want to eat and by midday had finished the last of the flasks of water with which we had set out.