Zemindar (123 page)

Delighted with our borrowed plumage, it was natural to wish to show it off to our friends, and hearing the strains of a celebratory band concert taking place on the central grassed square of the Fort, Kate announced her intention of attending it.

‘But, my dear,’ demurred Mrs Baines as Jessie and I joined Kate with alacrity, ‘you are so recently widowed! Are you sure it would be quite the thing?’

For a moment Kate hesitated; then she lifted her chin and, looking Mrs Baines in the eye, announced, ‘I’m quite sure, and so would George be.’

‘Well, of course, if
you
think it proper, and at a time like this I’m sure no one will think the less of you. But you cannot go out without bonnets and gloves. I will see what I have that will do for the present.’ With pursed lips she led us to her dressing-room, where Kate and I with unrepentant laughter tried on most of her bonnets before suiting ourselves, and Jessie, subtly made aware of her status as a common soldier’s wife, quietly accepted the use of a bandanna to tie over her hair.

It was easy to discern the women of Lucknow among the crowd seated around the wrought-iron bandstand. Almost all had been solemnly clothed in black by their more fortunate sisters.

‘’Tis as though they do not approve of us being alive,’ remarked Kate. ‘As though death were a parlour game, and those who have lost their loved ones must be set apart from the rest of the players who have not scored such high points.’

‘Or a charade, in which those who have guessed the answer correctly must remain silent so as not to spoil the game for the rest,’ I agreed grimly. ‘We are not playing the game by their rules, Kate. We are expected to be downcast, pale and pathetic, like mourners in novels.’

‘After all that we have seen of death? And all that we need of life?’

‘They know nothing of that need,’ I pointed out.

Mrs Bonner was seated in splendour with the Gubbinses and other notables of the siege. She bowed frigidly on catching my eye, but Minerva squealed her excitement on seeing us, and pushed through the crowd to kiss us and ask how we liked her new dress.

Llewellyn Cadwallader deserted his schoolboy friends as soon as he spied us, and sat on the grass at my feet, chewing without cessation on a variety of sweetmeats produced from the pocket of his new tweed knickerbockers. Delighted to see him happy, well and clean, I let my hand rest on his shoulder, and was touched when this small mark of affection called forth the answering gesture of a cheek laid for a moment against my hand. ‘Miss,’ he breathed, looking up at me with his dark spaniel’s eyes, ‘miss—sometimes I really thought it’d never be like this again. Never!’

‘I know, Llew,’ I answered, patting the thin shoulder. ‘Me too!’

Naturally I scanned the crowd for Oliver, though my better judgement told me that this was not a function to draw him. Probably he too was busy with tailors and bootmakers, but I allowed myself to hope that an At Home, to be held in our honour at the Baines’s bungalow that evening, would prove more inviting. When I remembered to look for Charles, I could not find him either.

We were exhorted to rest after
tiffin
, while Mrs Baines, her friends and servants made ready for the At Home. I went to my room, its unaccustomed comforts already taken for granted, and tried to read a novel. But the print swam before my eyes and I could not concentrate. I was aware again of the ill-defined unease I had known the previous night at dinner. Was it only the sight of four glasses and a silver cruet at each place that had struck me as excessive? Were not the forms and fashions by which the ladies of Allahabad lived, and to which they paid such zealous service, equally unnecessary? The fuss about the varying degrees of mourning, of leaving the house bonnetless, of ascertaining whether the guests invited to the
soirée
were all of a rank acceptable to Colonel Baines’s rank—were not these preoccupations as absurd?

Yet this was what I had thought I wanted. There was nothing unusually pretentious about the Baines household, nothing unfamiliar to me. On the contrary: it represented all the security and stability that, until a very short time ago, I felt I wanted more than anything in the world—even Oliver. Oh, to have the opportunity, I had thought not long since, to fill my mind and my days with just such essential trivia. But now, experiencing it, I was filled with irritation, almost with disgust.

As I left my room to meet the arriving guests, I was delayed by Mrs Baines, who tied a wide black ribbon round my left arm, explaining that all the Allahabad ladies were doing likewise as a gesture of respect to the dead of Lucknow. She was sure I would not wish to be ‘singular’. I submitted, and wondered, as she patted the bow in place with a satisfied air, what good could derive to the memory of Corporal Dines or the sixteen natives he had forced to ‘Eat a Cawnpore Dinner’ from my sable adornment. But I was a guest, so I followed my hostess meekly and contrived not to laugh when I came upon a knot of ladies and officers arguing as to whether secular music would be appropriate on such an occasion.

‘What would
you
say?’ earnestly enquired a young woman with trailing black streamers in her hair as well as on her arm.

‘I would say,’ I replied, ‘by all means let us have any music you care to play. What we have most needed, after a full stomach, a hot bath and a good night’s rest, has been a jolly party.’ They looked shocked, as I had known they would, so I left them and applied myself to ices and almond macaroons in the garden. Very shortly, however, I was led back to the drawing-room like an invalid, placed upon a chair near Kate and instructed not to move a step: a whole phalanx of gallant officers lived only to serve the gustatory requirements of the ‘Survivors’!

Seated thus in state, I felt rather as the Queen must feel at a Court Drawing-Room, but wished I enjoyed Her Majesty’s privilege of instigating the conversation. Kate and I were surrounded by a changing but ever respectful crowd of men and women, who, in their efforts to be tactful while satisfying their curiosity, posed the most fatuous questions and volunteered the most inane opinions.

‘Oliver!’ I suddenly cried in my heart. ‘Oh, Oliver, take me away. Rescue me from this unreality!’

Jessie had been informed that ‘of course’ the At Home for the Survivors was intended only for officers and their ladies, but since Pearl, a prized Survivor, was required to be present, she would be welcome to sit on the verandah with the child. She had also, that day, been given her
tiffin
on a tray in her bedroom. The British caste system, that had alternately annoyed and amused me in Lucknow in peace, had survived the agonies of Lucknow in siege.

After nearly an hour of polite platitudes, during which I had been presented with bon-bons, embroidered sachets filled with lavender petals, and an alarming handkerchief in the form of a Union Jack, bearing the word ‘Lucknow’ at its centre and edged with black braid, I made the excuse of attending to Pearl and escaped to the verandah. Charles had just arrived and was lost in admiration of his daughter, dressed at last in frills and flounces as small girls should be. The few steps I had taken along the verandah had been sufficient to assure me that Oliver was nowhere to be seen and, as Charles began to congratulate me on my appearance, I broke in impatiently, ‘But, Charles, where is Oliver? Surely he is coming? You’ve seen him today, of course?’

‘We shared quarters last night. He left very early this morning.’

‘He
left
? But where did he go?’

Charles regarded me steadily for a moment, then drew me away to where we could talk in private.

‘Laura, am I to presume that you have patched things up? Are matters between you and Oliver now as they were before … before the night of the Alum Bagh beacon?’

I had not realized that he could know nothing of the sequence of letters by which Oliver and I had made our peace. Kate and Jessie now knew all, and I had taken it for granted, somehow, that Charles would also be in possession of the facts.

I laughed, happily I am sure, and replied, ‘Yes, Charles. And better. We have at last reached a real understanding. In a strange way, that night proved a blessing to us both.’

‘I see. I did not know …’ His voice was grave and his eyes guarded.

‘Dear Charles,’ I comforted, taking his hand, ‘don’t spoil things for me. I am so happy, and I want your happiness too. You must learn to look elsewhere.’

He sighed and laid his other hand over mine for a second; then squared his shoulders and straightened up.

‘I only hope you are doing right.’

‘Oh, I’m sure I am, as you will be when you think about it. But tell me, where did Oliver go, Charles? And when will he be back?’

‘The answer to both questions is “I don’t know”. He left at dawn, taking Ishmial and Toddy with him—which was deuced inconvenient, since I was depending on one or other of them being around to get me some stuff from the bazaar and so on. All he told me was that he was going to see some family he knows in the district to make arrangements—living arrangements. Said he was going to fix up married quarters, so then, well, then I guessed that you …’

‘Married quarters!’ I gasped.

‘Yes. Is the wedding to be so soon?’

‘Good heavens, I don’t know!’ But then, thinking rapidly as I spoke, I went on, ‘There is no reason, I suppose, why it should be delayed,’ and told Charles that Kate had agreed to accompany Jessie and Pearl to Mount Bellew, should I decide to remain in India.

‘I see,’ he commented stiffly, so that I at once felt guilty at relinquishing my duties to Pearl. ‘And you feel now that you could live in Hassanganj again?’

‘I cannot live without Oliver. So I must learn to live again in Hassanganj. And,’ I added, gesturing around me, ‘I don’t think it will be as hard as I expected before renewing acquaintance with all this.’

‘Well,’ he said with a heavy sigh, ‘all I can do is wish you happiness then, dear Laura.’ Both voice and gaze were laden with emotion that I hoped he was not going to express. To my relief, he then took an envelope from his pocket and handed it to me. ‘Oliver asked me to give you this.’ He took my hand and pressed it and after a moment’s hesitation, stooped and kissed my brow. Then he walked back to Pearl, leaving me alone with my letter. I tore open the seal and hastily unfolded the single sheet of paper. It bore one word: ‘TOMORROW’.

Vexation. And delight. Maddening frustration and subdued ecstasy. The familiar irritation and the more recently acknowledged admiration. All the conflicting emotions that Oliver had always aroused flooded over me again with the knowledge that, though he had not come when I wanted him, yet his coming was imminent.

I have little recollection of how I passed the rest of that evening, except that it was in every variety of impatience. There was music, I remember and, scruples overcome, a young officer with bushy whiskers laid his hand on his heart and sang a sentimental ballad that he first dedicated to my ‘noble and heroic’ self.

I suppose we ate dinner, and I must have slept for some part of the night, as I awoke refreshed and eager for the ‘Tomorrow’ that was now today.

At breakfast I found another envelope addressed in the familiarly unfamiliar scrawl of Oliver’s left hand. Its presence went unmarked by the others, so I concealed it until I could open it alone. As soon as manners permitted, I excused myself from the table and hurried to my room. This time even the single word was lacking. Instead, wrapped in a screw of tissue paper, was a little ring of rubies and pearls, such as can be bought at any jeweller’s booth in the bazaar. Intrinsically worthless, it remains my greatest treasure.

I slipped it on the appropriate finger and ran into the dressing-room to admire it in the mirror. As I moved my hand in the morning light to bring out the fire of the rubies and the glow of the pearls, I remembered my mother telling me that she was particularly fond of the little pearl and ruby pin she had given me and which I had treasured through all our vicissitudes, since the ruby is the token of love and the pearl of fidelity. Not that Oliver Erskine was likely to know that. Maddening man; if it was intended as an engagement present, why hadn’t he brought it himself? I could have waited. But then it occurred to me that the trinket was more probably in lieu of an apology for his tardiness—a placatory offering before bearding the lioness in her den!

The ring calmed my impatience as it filled me with tenderness. I would allow him the last word. This time.

Then, suddenly, I was beset with anxiety regarding my appearance, and scanned the glass to make sure my borrowed dress became me. It was a pretty dress, its dusky rose adding some needed colour to my cheeks. As I carefully scrutinized my face, feature by feature, I recalled a pastel likeness of myself made a year or so before Emily’s marriage, and that must still hang in the Mount Bellew drawing-room. A young round face, and neat chestnut hair parted demurely over what Oliver had termed my ‘candid’ brow. The eyes were a little too large, the brows rather too defined, and the chin too settled into determination for beauty, I remembered, as I remembered also the delicious sense of identity I had enjoyed on first seeing a representation of myself other than in a too-subjective mirror.

The face that looked back at me now was heart-shaped and high-cheekboned, and bore shadows that defined new planes and new lines that accentuated shadows. The magnanimous brow? That remained. The eyes were deeper set, though, and looked darker. The nose was finer, the once amply curved mouth was thinner, but the chin still indicated obstinacy. No great beauty there, I thought, but the expression was an improvement on the untried assurance of the girl in the pastel. The face in the mirror was acquainted with self-doubt, the eyes, though more guarded, were also more benign, and the curving mouth, while retaining its hint of humour, also indicated a steadier gentleness. The short hair was brushed into springy curls and shone in the morning sun.

I turned away, resigned, if not wholly satisfied.

Kate and Jessie had taken Pearl out to be admired by acquaintances, and Mrs Baines was busy with the ordering of her household. I picked up Mr Roberts’s copy of Marcus Aurelius and went into the garden to wait.