Zemindar (53 page)

‘Both of them off together?’ Oliver looked up with belated interest.

‘Both of them,’ I answered crossly, and returned to my book.

Reading was not a pleasure: the lamp attracted all manner of insects so that one was continually slapping or brushing them away or picking them out of one’s hair or clothing, but it was better to attempt to read than to sit idle and allow the mind to wander.

So busily was I engaged in my battle with the winged and feelered adversary, that I did not notice Oliver get up and go into the house. We were sitting, as was usual at night, on the verandah outside the drawing-room.

What finally caught my attention was the sound of light feet running over the gravel of the path towards the house. I looked up in alarm (almost anything in those days could alarm me) and met Charles’s eyes; Emily was engrossed in
The Lady’s Magazine
. A moment later, Moti stood before us, breathing quickly, one hand clutching her veil to her face. Though, of course, he knew of all that she had done for Emily, Charles had never seen her, Moti being a Mohammedan and therefore, theoretically at least, in
purdah
.

‘It’s all right,’ I reassured him, though not before his look of concern had turned to an expression of pleasure. ‘It’s Moti.’

Moti’s dark eyes swept the three of us over the tinselled edging of her veil.

‘
Lat-sahib
?’ she queried. ‘
Lat-sahib
?’ She was looking for Oliver and I knew directly that her errand must be an urgent one to bring her thus boldly and openly to his house. Before I could attempt to say that I would fetch him, Oliver himself was with us.

‘They’ve all gone …’ he began, then seeing Moti, crossed the intervening space and spoke rapidly to her in her own tongue, while Emily, still in her chair with the magazine in her hands, looked on in uncomprehending surprise.

Moti’s answer was hurried and emotional, and accompanied by many gesticulations. At one point, she grabbed Oliver’s hand, letting fall her veil in so doing, and made as if she would drag him away with her. He disengaged her gently, shaking his head and laughing slightly, then pointed to us and asked her a further question.

The whole exchange took, I suppose, no more than a couple of minutes, but in that time, I realized from their expressions, from their gestures and the tone of their voices, that what we had feared was somehow upon us; in spite of the heat, my hands became ice-cold and my knees grew shaky.

Oliver must have reassured her. She stood silently for a moment, then went down on her knees on the ground while we all watched her, touched his feet with her forehead, then, getting up, threw the rest of us a perfunctory salaam and walked sedately away. But before the darkness quite enclosed her, she paused and turned a look of such open devotion and yearning to Oliver that, seeing it, I was as ashamed as if I had been discovered opening another’s letter. Oliver himself could not have caught it, for already he was speaking.

‘No servants in the house except Ishmial and the
abdar
. The
abdar
was sitting in his pantry dozing, waiting for the scullion to come and do the dishes, and Ishmial and Toddy-Bob have just come in from the stables to report that the quarters are deserted. Even Soorie has gone, poor old devil.’

Soorie was the watchman, an old man now, born in the quarters; for forty years he had told Hassanganj the time, striking the hours, the half-hours and the quarters on the great gong in the porch, which was also used to herald the approach of visitors. How was it that none of us had missed its sound? Because we were too accustomed to it?

‘But why has he gone, why aren’t they all here?’ Emily asked with dawning fear. ‘And Moti, what did she want, Oliver? She seemed so upset.’

Oliver paused a moment, estimating how much he should reveal. But it was too late now to consider Emily’s health and weak nerves.

‘She came to warn me, Emily,’ he said, ‘to tell me that a band of strangers have been seen in Peeplehara. She believes they intend to attack us. Tonight. We must go—now, Emily!’

Emily, understanding at last, had begun to wail like a child, ‘Oh, my baby, my baby! Oh, Charles, take us away; why did you ever bring us here? What can we do? Oh, my baby!’

I should have gone to her, but my legs refused to carry me. I was thinking of the unattended gong in the pillared porch, the lantern still beside it on the ground and, beyond the little ring of yellow light, the garden and park dark and deserted, and because of that abandoned gong suddenly menacing.

‘Emily, be quiet!’ Oliver’s voice broke into my reveries. He moved swiftly to Emily’s side, took the silly magazine from her lap and drew her to her feet. I thought he was going to shake her. She had her mouth open ready to scream, but he took her hand, put his arm around her shoulder and led her gently to the door.

‘Now listen to me, Emily. We have no time for hysterics.’ He was stern but kindly. ‘Your baby’s life will depend on how you conduct yourself in the next half hour. Not on what we do, but on what
you
do, because you can either help us or hamper us. Do you understand me?’

Emily nodded, her knuckles against her lips. ‘You must keep calm, Emily, and do exactly what you are told! All right?’

She nodded again, though her eyes were still unfocused with fright.

‘Good! Now Laura will take you upstairs, and you must bundle up the baby and whatever clothes and things she needs. Then go and sit quietly with Laura. Don’t come downstairs again until I call. Oh, and change your dress. Put on something dark and serviceable—and sensible shoes. Laura!’ He beckoned me, and I went to them and took Emily’s arm. His mention of hysterics had pulled me together, whatever it had done for Emily.

‘And for God’s sake, drop those damn fool birdcages,’ he added as we turned away.

‘What?’ I was puzzled.

‘Your hoops, woman. The things you wear under those acres of skirt. There’s no room for anything fancy where we are going!’ I nodded, and we went indoors.

I led Emily up the wide staircase, the utter silence of the huge house making me want to turn tail and run back to the men. Usually, quiet though the house was, there were always small, half-heard noises in the background: the clink of silver as the
abdar
laid the table, the clash of pan lids from the pantry where the food was dished up for serving, the comfortable mutter of the
ayahs
gossiping together between their duties, the swish of the house servants’ starched
atchkans
, as they moved from room to room tending lamps or opening windows, the creak of the
punkahs
. I had looked up as we crossed the drawing-room. The
punkah
was motionless so the coolie too had gone, and if we had been sitting in the drawing-room, we would perhaps have had this earlier warning.

The stillness of that
punkah
, even more than the silent gong, brought home the fact that disaster was upon us. Since the start of the hot weather, it had been impossible to ignore the patient figure crouched outside my bedroom, the cord of the
punkah
passing through his splayed toes, a brass pot of tepid water beside him. We did not often see the
punkah
-coolies; they sat hidden from view on the verandah downstairs, or on the balconies upstairs, but I was not yet sufficiently inured to the ways of India to ignore a fellow human being, however humble, who worked so unremittingly for my comfort. They had all gone.

Lamps had been lit along the corridors and in our bedrooms, but they hardly served to dissipate the thick warm darkness that filled the house, exacerbating our nebulous fears. In Emily’s room, I extracted her bundle from the recessess of the wardrobe where I had hidden it a fortnight before; then, while she picked up the baby, I got together some of its things and pinned them up in Emily’s paisley shawl. Pearl continued to sleep soundly in her mother’s arms as we moved to my room.

I changed my dress for a dark poplin house frock, took out my bundle and a cloak, laid the pistol where Emily would not see it and sat down to await our summons.

Perhaps, I thought, this is the last time I will ever be in this high, white, comfortable room, and I looked round it as though I had never seen it before. On the ceiling, a lizard, one of the many I had watched as I lay in bed in the humid warmth, crouched for an instant in waiting, then leapt across the surface of the plaster at a tiny spider angling its way across the sea of white. The spider disappeared; the lizard clicked its throat in satisfaction, and scurried back to its corner to await its next morsel.

‘Ugh! Horrid things. How cruel nature is,’ shuddered Emily, who had followed my gaze. As she spoke, I remembered our ‘birdcages’.

With the hoops removed, our skirts hung too low, impeding our feet, so I fetched a pair of scissors and cut off about four inches from the edge of both our skirts.

‘We can’t go out like this, Laura,’ Emily protested. ‘You must put a little hem in. I assure you I have never been in public wanting a stitch or a button in my life before, and I’m not going to start now!’ But I paid no attention. For, on opening a drawer to replace the scissors, I had seen there a small rosewood box containing my few trinkets and Wajid Khan’s bracelet. I had overlooked it on the night when I had packed my bundle, though I had not forgotten a sewing case, writing materials and my copy of Marcus Aurelius. The contents were of only sentimental value, among them a small brooch of rubies and pearls that had belonged to my mother, but I justified my sentimentality by the thought that no one else would value the things more highly than I did, and slipped the box into the top of my bundle. Then, at last, there was nothing to do but wait.

Sitting in silence on my high brass bedstead, Emily and I waited with the sleeping baby between us, while my small travelling clock ticked away the moments of that 4th of June 1857. I wished I could pray, or at least speak comfortingly to Emily. But, though I had forced myself to gather together our belongings and organize them for swift transport, I was capable of no further effort and could only wait in an apprehensive and strangely sorrowful silence. It was natural to be frightened at such a moment; but I could not account for the weight of true regret that lay on my heart, almost as though I were about to lose my home.

It must have been half an hour that we sat there before the men came upstairs. I heard Charles’s footsteps go directly to his own apartment and then Oliver entered my room.

Emily and I got to our feet hastily, but he ignored us and, taking Pearl from the bed, shook her awake, not roughly, but Emily remonstrated with him all the same. Oliver disregarded her, thumped the infant’s back, tossed her up in the air two or three times and, when she was crying indignantly, laid her in the crook of his left arm and stuck his brown thumb into her mouth to act as a comforter. Bewildered, Emily and I looked on in silence.

‘A drastic measure, but necessary under the circumstances,’ Oliver vouchsafed at last, while the baby sucked enthusiastically. ‘There is a pellet of opium under my thumbnail, and this young woman will sleep the clock round if we can get it into her.’

‘Opium! … oh, mercy!’ breathed Emily.

‘It’s an old trick known to every
ayah
who has ever had to deal with a querulous child. You’d be surprised at the number of fine English gentlemen who have been reared on the infernal poppy.’

‘But she’ll die,’ whispered Emily, too agonized to snatch the child from him.

‘No, but she will sleep like the dead, which is what we want her to do. In twelve hours or so, she’ll be as right as rain.’

We watched in fascination while Pearl sucked contentedly, the tears of her awakening still undried on her sweetly rounded cheeks. After some minutes, Oliver withdrew his thumb, examined it with interest and pronounced the experiment successful. All the opium had disappeared down the baby’s throat.

‘Oh, my poor darling, what have we done to you?’ crooned Emily as she took the child. I gathered up our various packages and made to follow Oliver.

Charles and he had worked hard in the downstairs rooms during our absence. At a glance, I saw that they had tried to simulate a frantic departure: furniture had been knocked over as though in haste, drawers and cupboards lay half open, gaping their contents on to the floor. In one corner of the dining-room, a chenille tablecover held a quantity of silver, but one corner hung open, revealing its contents. A loaf of bread stood on the table, with beside it a joint of cooked meat and the knives used for their cutting; off the passage leading from the dining-room the larders and pantries stood open, temptingly, their contents disarranged.

Soon sounds from above stairs told that Charles was producing the same effect of delusory haste in the bedrooms.

‘Oh, Oliver … why ever didn’t we hide the silver as other people did, and the jade and beautiful porcelain? And, oh, Oliver, all the books! What if they are taken?’ For I had realized belatedly that Oliver would probably never see his possessions again, those possessions to which he paid such scant attention, but which nevertheless had been part of his life from the day he was born.

‘Why? Because, perhaps, I own too much. Besides, there is no safe hiding place for them in Hassanganj once I have gone. Anyway, I count my life dearer than my plate. Leave ’em enough to loot and they’ll lose interest in the chase. Which reminds me …’

He fumbled at his watch chain and took from it a large key, the key to the cellar. The entrance to the cellar was in the pantry nearest the dining-room and often I had seen the
abdar
come to Oliver for permission to bring up the claret or a bottle of port. Now he opened the cellar door wide, descended into the dark depths and proceeded to break bottles. Not many—just enough so that our pursuers should think he had been interrupted in his work of destruction. He clattered back to the dim light of the dining-room, carrying three bottles. One he broke deliberately on the threshold, leaving the remnants to indicate its place of origin; another, a flat green bottle of old brandy, he placed in his pocket, and the third he opened at the sideboard. Then he searched round for glasses, found four and filled them.