Zemindar (82 page)

‘He’ll be the better of his grievin’ when he’s slept away the rum,’ she assured me, and returned to her socks.

Later, as I was clearing up the kitchen before following the others to bed, Toddy awoke, and regarded me warily through one side-set eye.

‘Miss, I bin drinkin’!’ he informed me unnecessarily and with a hint of truculence.

‘Yes, Tod, but … well, you have an excuse this time.’ What did it matter after all? Perhaps if I could have found release in liquor, I would have been drunk too.

‘Oh, miss!’ He sat up quickly, then clapped his hands to his head and winced. ‘Oh, miss!’ he repeated, when he had recovered from the initial shock of assuming an upright position. ‘What’ll we do now? Me and Ishmial? What’ll we do! Me ’special? What can I do?’

I did not know what they could do, so said nothing.

‘I’ve no ’ome, miss; leastways no ’ome but ’Assanganj. No family neither, miss. I got nowhere as I can go to now—when this is finished, I mean. Maybe it won’t finish … for me. Maybe I’ll catch my wallop before that there relief ever comes. I swear to God, miss, beggin’ your pardon for cursin’, but I ’opes I does! I really ’opes I does!’ He wiped his nose on a sleeve, and screwed up the one beady eye that I could see.

‘With the Guv’nor gone, there’s no place for me to go, no place at all. You see, miss, ’e were like me mother and me father all put together. ’E picked me out of the gutter when I was ’ardly more’n a nipper, and I been with ’im ever since. Always with ’im. It were in London. Me Dad run off; don’t ever remember ’im. And me Ma drank like a belly-cut wasp at a jam jar. There was seven of us, different pa’s I think we ’ad—we all looked mighty different anyway—and we never ’ad no money. When we was big enough we ’ung around the public ’ouses and the ’ostlers’ yards, beggin or runnin’ messages or ’oldin’ ’orses and that, anything that would make a penny or two. Me Ma, though, she could pick the pocket of a h’archangel and him never know it. When she was sober, of course. I spent all my time ’angin around ’orses. ’Orses was the only good thing in me life and the only thing I cared about. I wanted to be a ostler or maybe a coachman, but there was no use in ’opin’ ’cause no one would give me a place. No one to speak for my character; they all knew me Ma in them parts.

‘So anyway, one day the Guv’nor come along and give me ’is ’orse to ’old. I’d seldom seen the like of such a beast, and such leathers! Soft as a lady’s shoe the saddle was. So we ’as a friendly chat like about the animal, and ’e congratulates me on the amount I knew about ’orseflesh, and then ’e goes inside.

‘While ’e’s eating along comes me Ma, with the littlest nipper on ’er hip. That’s ’ow she worked, see? She’d whine a bit and pinch the kid till it yelled and then say she had nothin’ to give it to eat—which were true enough often—and the party would likely take out a penny and give it to her. As ’e turned to mount, she’d have spied the right pocket, see, Ma would fall against ’im or mebbe drop the nipper and do her stuff.

‘This day she tries the same game with the Guv’nor, while I ’olds the ’orse’s ’ead. Right worried I was, too, and angry when I see ’er come, ’e’d been that decent with me, interested and polite-like, like ’e always is when he understands, you know?’

I nodded silently, thinking of Emily whom he had also understood.

‘Well, Ma fumbles the job, the Guv’nor catches ’er with ’er ’and in ’is pocket, grabs ’er and then grabs me too, ’cause I’d yelled out to warn ’im. Ma wriggles out of ’er shawl, drops the kid at the Guv’nor’s boots and scarpers.’

A slight smile flitted across Toddy’s face at the memory.

‘’E looks after ’er, quite cool, you know, and asks: “She is a thief,” says ’e. “Why did you warn her?” Now that stung me. I’d been tryin’ to do right by ’im, ’adn’t I? “It was you I was warnin’,” I says, “and I wish I ’adn’t. She’s my Ma. She don’t mean no harm, but we got no pa and with all the young ’uns at ’ome” … and so on … chatting ’im up, like. I thought ’e’d report me mother to the Runners, anyone else would of, or the magistrates, maybe, and then what would happen to us, eh? Instead ’e puts ’is chin in ’is hand and takes a long look at me. Then suddenly, ’e bends down and smells me breath.

‘“Drink,” says he, disgusted, and I felt proper ashamed. “How old are you, boy?”

‘“Don’t know,” says I. “Twelve year, maybe, maybe more.”

‘“Why do you waste your pennies on liquor? You’re hungry too, or look it.” So I tells ’im I drinks because I like it and me Ma does too, and I never remember bein’ anything but ’ungry. By this time I’m blubberin’ a bit, and me little brother is roarin’ and the ’orse is gettin restive with all the noise.

‘Maybe I should ’ave scarpered then like me Ma done. But there was something about the way ’e was lookin’ me over, considering, that made me stay.

‘Well, to cut a long story short, instead of calling the Runners ’e takes us, me and the little chap, Ned, to a chop ’ouse and buys us a dinner like we’d never ’ad. Then he makes me take ’im to my mother. ’E yells at her a bit, says she should be in gaol but then the nippers would all starve, then gives ’er a fiver and says he’ll give me a chance to earn a ’onest penny workin’ with his ’orses. Me Ma don’t mind. All she thinks about is the ’undred shillings worth of gin in her mit. So ’e takes me away, first to the ’otel he lives in, then to France, and then ’e brings me out ’ere. Sixteen year ago it is now. I never looked back, miss. Not once. ’E pays me reg’lar. Feeds me reg’lar. Trusts me. And Ishmial teaches me all as I ’adn’t already learned about ’orses. ’Is father—Ismial’s father—was a Pindari ’orse thief, and a very knowin’ man. And I plays it square with the Guv’nor all these years. Never snitched a farthin’ from ’im, and when I ’as to drink, I does it reg’lar like—with ’is permission. That were the only condition ’e ever made. No drinkin’ exceptin’ with ’is say-so. It were worth it, miss. Never regretted it a day. Not till now. And now, well, miss, I ’as it in me to wish ’e’d never set sight on me, nor never tried to make nothin’ of me. ’Cause without ’im, miss, I’m done for. I got nothin’ left!’

For a while we were silent: Toddy propped on an elbow looking into the darkness, and I sitting on the stool beside him looking at Toddy. Outside the guns spat sporadically through the steady thunder of the rain, and the toads croaked. Both of us were trying to adjust to the emptiness of life, and I envied Tod his right to express his grief.

‘Miss Laura,’ he said after a time, very quietly. ‘You know how I feel?’

‘Yes, Toddy, I know,’ I answered, and he lay back on his blanket and wept.

Ungud had carried no written message into the Residency on that first visit of his on the 22nd of July, and at first Mr Gubbins, who was head of the Intelligence Department, had been reluctant to believe his words. He and his staff had examined Ungud thoroughly, then ordered him out again to bring written confirmation of his news, which if it were true was heartening indeed, for Ungud said that he had seen the British once more in control of Cawnpore. Probably the authorities had tried to keep this intelligence to themselves until it was confirmed, but in twenty-four hours we all knew that General Havelock, with a small force, had defeated the Nana Sahib, burned down his palace at Bithur, retaken Cawnpore and was now preparing to march to Lucknow. The garrison, as a whole, received the news cautiously; none of us was eager to give way to hope. But on the 25th, Ungud materialized again, this time with a letter from Lt. Col. Fraser Tytler, giving substantially the same information and, moreover, promising to relieve us within the week.

Then we allowed ourselves to rejoice, if only for others, for Ungud had brought other news as well. We knew already of the Nana Sahib’s treachery to General Wheeler’s Cawnpore force, and among us were the wives and children, the fathers and mothers of the men who had been mown down by the Nana’s guns just as they thought they had attained safety. There were many besides myself who feared sleep because of the vision it brought of a river flowing blood and ablaze with fire. Now, we learnt that the women and children who had jumped clear of those sinister boats and been dragged out of the water by the Nana’s inexplicable moment of mercy, had met an even more ghastly fate. For eighteen days they had been kept in a comfortable house near the Nana’s palace, the
Bibighar
, wellfed and treated kindly. Then, one morning early, five men with freshly edged swords, had entered the guarded house. When they emerged at midday all the women and girls, the children and babies at the breast, lay slaughtered like cattle in rooms ankle-deep in blood.

‘It is too dreadful to contemplate! Too dreadful! And, Miss Laura, when I realize that the same thing may very well happen here …!’

Mr Roberts, our harbinger of doom, mopped his brow with a clean but crumpled handkerchief. He derived some sort of strength, I believe, from trying to keep his clothes as neat and spotless as they had always been, in spite of the difficulties presented by lack of soap, hot water and a smoothing iron. He was regularly to be seen darning his socks, a sight which called forth no little ridicule from his peers.

He had brought us the news of the massacre of the women and children, and in doing so had gained a measure of relief for himself at the expense of Kate and Jessie, who had both had many friends among the victims.

‘The bodies—what was left of them, that is—frightfully mutilated they were, and hacked to pieces—were thrown down a well in the compound of the house. Such barbarism is scarcely to be credited. And from the Nana! Why, I remember the man myself well. I often had occasion to go to Cawnpore, and really he seemed a most unexceptionable, gentlemanly native. And the children! It is said that two of them … !’

‘No!’ Kate almost spat the word at him. ‘No, Mr Roberts! I will not listen to any more. What you have told us is enough! I … I knew so many of the women—and their babies. I had known them all my married life. Poor Polly Danvers—she must have been over sixty; she must have been there, and I remember her as a young woman lately married, who was very kind to me when I first came out. And young Martin Dodd’s wife, Agnes. They have been married only six months. He’s here, poor boy. They were expecting their first child. Agnes was only eighteen. And Barry O’Connell … he left a wife and five children in Cawnpore, and he’s lying in the hospital with a stomach wound. Oh, God, I suppose I should go to them. But I can’t, Laura, I can’t! Perhaps later, when we have got … accustomed to the thought. But I can’t yet!’

‘No, no, and where would be the sense o’ that?’

Jessie’s voice was muffled. She had put her large hands over her face, but the tears ran down her cheeks in spite of them and dropped on her broad grey bosom. She rocked to and fro on the little stool, and each movement of her body produced a protesting squeak from the cane.

‘And where would be the good of going to anyone but the Lord in such a time? What comfort would ye have to give?

‘There’s many a one among the dead that I ha’e lived wi’, marched wi’, grieved wi’, nursed and joyed wi’, these many hard years past. Bairns that I helped their mothers to born; laddies I made the breeches for, and wee girls that ha’e helped me bath my Jamie when he was hardly bigger than my hand. They were kin of mine, though not by blood, but in sufferin’. We bore each other’s woes, we women in the regiments. And we had the greater woe than weal. The men could drink and curse and whore to buy a wee while’s peace, to forget the heat and dust and dirt, the loneliness and the fear, in rum or a boughten woman’s dirty arms. But we had no such comfort. We bore our bairns painfully in strange places, to lose them o’ the heat or cholera or flux before they’d brought more than worry to their mothers’ hearts. We suffered our men in their drink, nursed ’em when they were ill, followed ’em when they marched, and few among us hoped for any comfort greater than a belly big with child. Aye, we’d see the young ones come, so fu’ of hope, and age an English lifetime in a year. And then to die—in such a way, in such a place, by such a hand! The ways of the Lord are passing strange, passing strange!’ Her voice died away, and even Mr Roberts was silenced. For a while only the mosquitoes said their say. Then Kate spoke again.

‘Will we never understand them?’ she said slowly. ‘Why should the Nana have gone back on his moment’s mercy so cruelly? What can have made him do it? How could they hinder or hurt him? Why did he change his mind twice? You would have thought that he could not bear to harm the objects of his own clemency. Anyone else, but not them surely?’

‘Oh, Mrs Barry, if we had the answer to that,’ said Mr Roberts, ‘but, well, we do not know enough of what was happening, or of what the Nana thought would happen. Perhaps he was frightened of what would befall him if they were found in his keeping, though that messenger man … what’s his name?’

‘Ungud?’

‘Ungud, yes, he said no hair of their heads had been harmed until that morning. The Nana must have known, you see, that General Havelock was very near. Perhaps he panicked. Perhaps he was really more evil than he appeared. How will we know until they catch him?’

‘And yet, you know, I may be a blathering old fool, but I’d stake my left hand that man wasn’t evil. Weak perhaps, but he hadn’t an evil face. Something, or someone, influenced him. God forgive me for my softness at such a moment, but I cannot believe it was his doing!’

‘Certainly, it is hard to credit, very hard to credit. But then, my dear Mrs Barry, so are most of the things that have happened to us all in the last couple of months. The messenger said that the town of Cawnpore is a desert of ruined buildings. Much had been fired or destroyed before our forces arrived, and then when our men found the house and the well, they went mad and completed the work of destruction. Such a pleasant town it was in the cold weather. Though always dusty, of course. Very dusty …’

The daily ration of rum or beer allowed to each man was hardly enough to inebriate a kitten. After the news of the
Bibighar
massacre had filtered through the garrison, however, we were overtaken by a wave of drunkenness. A few drank for the sake of relief; after all, whatever had happened at Cawnpore, General Havelock was on his way to help us. But many more drank to kill their grief and shock. It was a mystery where the liquor came from but, whatever its source, it was consumed in a quantity sufficient to immobilize some of the batteries for hours on end. But for the lucky fact that the enemy were unusually quiet for the succeeding few days, we would have been in very real danger of being overthrown ourselves.