Zemindar (28 page)

‘Oh, certainly,’ Emily assured him, ‘Laura is part of the family! We wouldn’t dream of leaving her out of anything. Why, Laura manages us both, and I don’t know where we’d be without her help.’

‘I can imagine it,’ Mr Erskine answered, looking me full in the face. ‘I am sure you are a most admirable companion to everyone, Miss Hewitt, and I look forward to making a brief acquaintance into a lasting friendship. You will be most welcome at Hassanganj.’

I bowed as graciously as I could, and as, quite unnecessarily, he had extended his hand, I had to give him mine. When I withdrew it I found myself clasping a slip of paper. I did not have to examine it to know what it was. Wallace would have one worry the less. But in six months’ time, who could know how many others he would have acquired in its place?

On the following morning we were joined at breakfast by Kate Barry who informed us that she too had received a call from Mr Erskine—and an invitation.

‘Oh, I know I am very wicked to repeat things, but sure and I must tell you what happened! Poor Oliver! He’s distraught, quite distraught I tell you, at the idea of having you girls with him in Hassanganj! “I could manage a regiment of males and not give ’em a second thought,” says he, “but two proper young Englishwomen. Kate, I don’t even know what sort of things they like to eat. Bath Olivers! That’s it; all young English females have to eat Bath Olivers at frequent intervals, isn’t that so, Kate? And there must be other things—but I don’t know what they are. And tea, Kate. I never drink the stuff myself, but I must get in a case of tea. There must be dozens of other things that I should have and don’t have. Scented soap. And … oh, God, what have I let myself in for? I can’t manage on my own, Kate. Come with them, please! George shall join us at Christmas, and we’ll have some capital shooting. Tell him that, and he’ll let you come. Just come for a couple of weeks or a couple of months or however long you care to—just a couple of days if necessary. But come and see that things are as they should be in Hassanganj. It’s so long since there’s been a woman there, Kate!” “True enough, my lad,” I says to him, tapping him on his waistcoat, “and even longer since there’s been a
lady
,” which took not a feather out of him, mind you! So there you are, my dears. I’m coming to Hassanganj with you—just as soon as you’re ready to go. George is charmed at getting rid of me and my long tongue for a while, and I, I can think of nothing better than a Christmas in Hassanganj after all this long time. And what’s more, I am to come laden with Bath Olivers and tea and scented soaps and anything else the heart of young females can desire!’

Nothing could have suited me better than to have Kate with us in Hassanganj. My feelings regarding the visit were acutely ambivalent. On the one hand I detested the idea of accepting the hospitality of a man I liked as little as I did Mr Erskine, but on the other hand there was the lure of experiencing India with a closeness and familiarity that would be denied me elsewhere. Kate, cheerful, forthright, shrewd Kate, would provide that neutral and uninvolved presence so necessary to the success of any family party, and would, moreover, be an admirable guide and mentor in the strange life ahead of us.

It was Charles, of course, who suggested we should remain on in Lucknow to help the Averys with their packing and other arrangements. Emily would have left for Hassanganj the day after Mr Erskine’s visit, and I was glad for Connie’s sake that Charles managed to restrain his own enthusiasm, as I was able to be of some assistance to her before the move. She spent most of the ensuing fortnight in bed or in tears, and poor Wallace was hardly more capable of seeing to his affairs than was his wife. The unhappiness of his parents communicated itself to little Johnny, who whined and sniffed his way among the gathering trunks and chests, bewildered and lost in an adult world gone suddenly awry.

Wallace had been posted to a station about forty miles north of Lucknow. ‘I shall be in total command,’ he told Connie, with a brief return of his old optimistic blustering. ‘You’ll be first lady of the station, old girl. That’ll be something, won’t it? You won’t half like being the
Burra-mem
of an entire station!’ Later we learnt that there were only two other white men in the station, and a mere handful of soldiers and police. But one finds one’s comfort where one must.

I made an opportunity of speaking to Wallace regarding Charles’s offer of help, imploring him to reconsider his refusal. He shook his head, sighed and said, ‘Perhaps—perhaps, Laura, if only the cost of the passages were involved. But don’t you see, I cannot afford to keep up a home for them in England and another for myself here. Even one establishment, as things are now, is going to be a struggle. So what would you have me do? Explain everything to Charles and ask another man to support my wife and child? Indefinitely? No, Laura, that I cannot do. I have some pride! And who knows, things may yet take a turn for the better. They might!’

I said no more. Shortly before we left I gave him the IOU he had signed for Mr Erskine, with an ingenious story of how it had been returned as Mr Erskine did not care to win so much money from his host. The story did not fool even me, but he appeared to accept it and did not question me further. His mind by then was on other things.

We stayed to the very end, and only when the dilapidated buggy had disappeared through the familiar white-washed gate-posts, did we turn our attention to our own journey. Charles had resold the carriage he had bought on our arrival. Mr Erskine had sent his own heavy travelling carriage to convey us to Hassanganj and with it Toddy-Bob, the little Cockney, and eight mounted guards, all uniformed and carrying muskets and looking not very much different from the normal sepoy, except for a certain lack of attention to such details as brass buttons and buckles.

As we drove down the curved driveway for the last time, we passed a bullock cart laden with Avery baggage on the top of which was strapped the parrot’s bell-shaped cage, carefully covered with a pillowslip. Poor old Polly, what next for you, I wondered as we went by, and from the depths of his covers the bird replied in raucous tones, ‘Good girl, Connie! Goo-oo-ood girl!’

Lucknow and its life were behind us.

‘How plain does it appear that

there is not another condition of

life so well suited for

philosophizing as this in which

thou now happenest to be.’

Marcus Aurelius

Our approach to Hassanganj was made on a clear evening in mid-December. Smoke rising from stubble fields, the scent of burning leaves and an underlying sharpness in the air told of autumn, but otherwise the gentle luminosity of the fading sky and the pastel colouring of a temperate west recalled more a spring in England than the approach of the brief Indian winter.

The road from Lucknow had been appalling, rutted and seamed, and if not inches deep in mud then equally thick in fine white dust, so that our progress had been both uncomfortable and slow. We had spent two nights in
dak
-bungalows as dirty and infested with insects as those we had encountered during our journey up-country from Calcutta, and were now near the end of our third full day of travel. Mr Erskine had meant well by sending us his coach, but we soon realized that we would have made better time in the light
dak-gharis
of that previous journey. Rain had fallen each night, and several times our heavy vehicle had got stuck in miry watercourses or sunk axle-deep in dirt roads that had suddenly turned to swamps. The country was more thickly wooded as we moved north towards the mountains; the heavily cultivated landscape of the first day gave way to long stretches of dark forest or close-cropped grazing land. The crops looked good, but the villages were often rundown and neglected, and twice in the second day we had passed small homesteads burnt to the ground—pathetic remains of some poor peasant’s lifelong work. Hanging like a monkey from the postillion’s perch behind us, Toddy-Bob had poked his head in at the window on each occasion to inform us cheerfully: ‘Rohilla raiders around!’

‘Raiders?’ Emily was apprehensive.

‘Yes’m. Big blokes. Six-footers. Rohilkand. Next province. Very fierce! Bastards!’ Toddy’s natural ease of expression was syncopated by the jerking of the coach.

‘No need to worry,’ Kate reassured us. ‘Probably is the work of Rohillas, but since the kingdom was annexed, they have only descended on this part of the country in small bands. There was a time when they were a real menace; they can still be a nuisance, but it is unlikely that Oliver would have allowed us to travel with so small a company had there been anything much to fear.’

‘So our martial escort was sent along for more than effect?’

‘Sure and aren’t they a part of the Hassanganj
rissal
? The Erskines’ private army, woman dear. It used to number several hundred, in the old days, and very necessary it must have been, too. I dare say Oliver has done away with all but a few score now—just enough to see his rents reach the bank in safety—and escort his newfound relatives to Hassanganj. Very well trained and disciplined they are, or were when old Mrs Erskine was still alive and George and I used to visit her.’

‘Good God, a private army! Whatever next?’ exclaimed Charles with disapproval.

‘Och, but as I say, there’s no need to worry in these days. ’Tis a relic of past glories; no more.’

I hoped Kate was right, but my mind was not lightened by observing the number of mud forts, walled and moated, which reared up from the fields of sugar cane, gram and millet. Many were now merely ruins, but whatever their condition, they hinted too strongly of a country accustomed to war and unrest, and I observed as much to Kate.

‘There’s never been peace, what we would call peace, in these parts. Not since anyone can remember, anyway. The last few Nawabs have been rather less than estimable in character, or even strong. While they luxuriated in their palaces in Lucknow, the villagers, poor divils, were subjected to every sort of extortion, bullying and knavery—from their own landlords, the
talukhdars
, y’know, and from the Nawab’s tax-gatherers and from these Rohilla raiders. Why, I can remember only a few years ago all these little forts you see in the fields were surrounded by great thickets of bamboo. Bamboo made an excellent stockade: musket bullets just ricocheted off the canes, doing no harm, d’you see, and most rent and tax collection, to say nothing of the “perks” demanded by the Rohillas, were extracted at gunpoint. Our last Resident, John Sleeman, had the bamboo razed in an effort to make the
talukhdars
less willing to resist the Nawab’s men, but the little wars and skirmishes continued all the same.’

‘And Mr Erskine engaged in them?’ I asked.

‘Lord love you, yes! What else was the man to do—when it was necessary? Not that it has been necessary too often since Oliver took over. Rumour has it that he entered into some sort of concordat with the Rohillas. Even took a number of ’em into his
rissal
, so they say, by way of good faith. But I’m sure there have been times, even quite recently, when he had to put up a fight to maintain his boundaries, protect his water, that sort of thing, y’know.’

Kate, apparently, saw nothing peculiar in the thought of an English gentleman, in this enlightened age, doing battle for his lands like some medieval warrior baron, but her casual explanation had brought a new dimension to our visit to Hassanganj.

‘Mind you,’ she continued, unaware of the effect her words had on her hearers, ‘he’d have more sense than to fiddle with his dues to the Nawab, and the Nawab’s people would know better than to interfere with him, so there’d be no trouble in that direction. But the
talukhdars
around him, and the big
zemindars
, well, naturally they’d resent a white man having his possessions and position, and ’tis
they
no doubt who gave him most bother—when they were able. They’ve been dispossessed themselves, though, now—this man Thomason, the Chief Settlement Officer, thinks the land should belong outright to the tenants, d’you see—so they’ll be having troubles enough for the moment without turning on Hassanganj.’

‘But how extraordinary,’ Emily breathed, her blue eyes wide with wonder.

‘Thoroughly primitive!’ Charles averred belittlingly.

‘Och, no doubt of that! But ’twould be folly, Charles, to judge matters out here by the same yardstick you use at home. Not only conditions are different, remember, but the people. Their expectations, their requirements. Most of all their necessities. I think you will find it to the Erskines’ credit that all down the years they have respected the people’s own necessities—not the necessities the government at Home feel the people ought to have!’

I could see that Emily was greatly taken by this unexpected aspect of Mr Erskine’s existence in Hassanganj. For myself, I tended to agree with Charles that force of arms was a lamentably primitive way of settling differences, but held my peace, knowing that an Emily subject to romantic excitement was easier to deal with than an Emily suffering from imaginary fears. Small wonder, though, that Mr Erskine had developed so authoritative a manner, brought up as he had been in a private kingdom capable of making private wars. It was an explanation, I told myself, even if not a justification of his autocratic manner.

Late on that third afternoon of our journey, Toddy-Bob told us that we had crossed the boundary and were now in Hassanganj. I had understood that we were approaching the ‘hills’—the Himalaya mountains—but there was no sign of them, and hardly an incline had broken the monotony of the countryside we traversed that day, which had been as flat as a tabletop, interrupted only by
topes
of ancient mangoes or the deep gashed banks of a seasonal watercourse. We were all weary, bored and consequently dozing, when Toddy hung into the window and announced, ‘Nearly there—the house!’ and pointed to a smudge of deep pink just visible among dark trees in the distance.