Zemindar (83 page)

Once again, the optimistic among us suggested that the pandies had gone to meet Havelock’s advancing force, but on the following Sunday another mass attack was launched against us.

Ungud paid us a visit shortly before it commenced.

He had become something of a hero to the garrison, and when he walked on to our verandah, the other women crowded round to see him and ask him questions. Some who had been bereaved by one or other of the Cawnpore massacres begged tearfully for more details, trying to force him to give them a crumb of hope. But to all the questions, all the suggestions that perhaps he was wrong, perhaps some few had escaped, at least from the boats, he would only shake his head and repeat,
‘Sub
murgya hai’
(They are all dead). When he was going, he touched my feet with his forehead and said: ‘
Mem
! The
Lat-Sahib
was a man … but they cut him down like dog.’ I was glad Toddy-Bob was not there to hear.

Then the attack broke out. It was the worst we had so far endured, but of short duration. We hoped the pandies knew their days of power over us were nearly over, and exulted when the firing died away to a ragged stutter of musketry and finally silence.

The assault was not even a topic of conversation for long, for that night someone entered the Resident’s House and stole a selection of the King of Oudh’s jewels—those jewels with which we had entered the enclosure a month before. The plan had been to bury them, along with a quantity of other treasure, in front of the building. No one then could have dug them up without being observed. But in those first chaotic days, no labour could be spared to dig the pits, and the treasure had merely been locked away in one of the rooms.

Charles laughed as he told us what had happened.

‘Well, it shows at least that someone has faith in our relief really materializing,’ he said. ‘I own that I wouldn’t have the spirit to think of future wealth in these circumstances!’

I did not find the matter very entertaining myself. I had noticed that Toddy-Bob was wearing that day a new and splendid pair of cord breeches; they must have cost a small fortune at the auction of some officer’s effects, and Toddy-Bob was not, as far as I knew, a wealthy man. Or had not been. But I held my peace.

As women will do under any circumstances, the three of us, Kate, Red Jess and myself, had fallen into a routine of housework: Jess was responsible for Pearl, Kate made the beds and kept the rooms tidy, and I washed the floors and wrestled with the cooking. None of us had enough to do, and time hung heavily on our hands. We had no books except Emily’s Bible and Kate’s prayerbook. Jessie, who could not read, was probably the luckiest of us; she could not guess what she was missing. She had, however, an extraordinary memory, and in the evenings, when Pearl was tucked into her box for the night, she would recite psalms, or the poems of Robert Burns or the Ettrick Shepherd, or sing us hymns promising glory to the virtuous and sulphurous hells to the sinful. She never missed a word and could recite and sing for an hour at a stretch without repeating herself. Otherwise, she was not communicative. She looked askance at Kate’s rosary beads and practice of crossing herself when she heard of a death. At first, she would just purse her lips and pretend not to notice, but eventually, curiosity got the better of her.

‘Yon wee beads?’ she asked truculently one evening. ‘What do ye
do
wi’ them?’

Kate’s bright eyes twinkled. She explained the sequence of prayers: how the Hail Marys said on the ten small beads served as a measure of time during which one was expected to think of some moment in the life of Jesus Christ—his Birth, Death, Resurrection and so on—the large beads between them, on which the Lord’s Prayer was recited, serving as a reminder to change the scene so to speak.

‘Weel,’ Jessie said doubtfully when Kate concluded, ‘there’s nae much wrong with what I can see o’ that. I willna say the Papish prayer to the Virgin, mind, but when ye tak the big beadie in your finger, sing out and Jess’ll give glory wi’ ye!’

My culinary efforts did not occupy me for very long each day; the hardest part was trying to get the tough gun-bullock meat into an edible condition. I used to whack it between two flat stones on the floor, and then shred it with Emily’s nail scissors. Even so it was tough and tasteless. Apart from my stew made of the beef (without vegetables) and rice and lentils there was little variation possible. To eke out the tea, we drank toastwater—slightly charred
chapattis
covered with boiling water and then allowed to steep. We got used to it.

I longed for occupation and could find none. All of us became irritable and snappy, and quarrels and stiffnesses were common among the ladies of the Gaol. We kept ourselves to ourselves as much as possible, much to Mrs Bonner’s annoyance, for she had constituted herself the mentor and social arbiter of the Gaol. Morning calls were no longer possible except within the Gaol itself, but Mrs Bonner would put on her bonnet and sail down the inner verandah each morning at ten to do her duty by her neighbours; or rather, those of them whom she considered within her social
milieu
. She could not forget that she had once been the First Lady of a station—a very small station, Kate informed me sourly—and so she condescended to give unwanted advice and encouragement, even to those unfortunates on whom she absolutely could not call—the women of the lower orders. She formed the habit when the weather and the firing permitted, of singing hymns on the inner verandah each evening with those of the ladies who had not had the courage to withstand the suggestion, and it was to escape the unction in her self-satisfied voice as she warbled at the Lord that I, one night, closed the door behind me and seated myself on the steps of the outer verandah.

It had rained heavily all afternoon and toads were hopping into position near the puddles to begin their chorus. Mrs Bonner would have competition. Of course there was gunfire: the crack of a musket now and then, sometimes a sharp burst as two or three marksmen fired simultaneously. Once a shell burst above the Redan Battery, but two men passing at the time never looked up or broke their stride. We knew enough to recognize that the pandies tonight were not in a serious mood. The sky had cleared; a few pale stars grew bold and shone as I watched, and the western horizon was washed with green light that lent a brief unearthly glow to the tumbled buildings.

I closed my eyes and leaned my head against a shot-scarred pillar, wondering without much interest when our relief would really arrive. We had had a false alarm on the previous day: firing had been heard in the direction of Cawnpore and a strong force of pandies had crossed the Iron Bridge and rushed off in the direction of the firing. Like lightning, word had spread that Havelock had arrived. Men cheered, women rushed out into the open, congratulating each other on their deliverance; some even climbed on to the roofs to watch for our troops, and those of the wounded who could walk left the hospital, grabbing their weapons as they did so, in order to harass the natives still surrounding us as Havelock fought his way in.

But someone had made a silly mistake. There was no relief in sight, and dejection supplanted the enthusiastic cheers as we crept back to our rooms and the men turned once more to their guns. Excitement had not been unreasonable, however, for it was over a week since we had received word that the relieving force could be expected in ‘five or six days’, and it could not possibly be delayed more than a few days longer.

A few days more and it would all be over. I would be free to go home, free to walk on fresh green grass and breathe pure air; free to wear new clothes and eat good food; free, at last, to make plans.

But what plans were worth the making now? What was there left for me to do, but go back to Mount Bellew for a time, and then start work in some strange household, giving lessons to spoiled children? Yet, for the days between the first assault and Ungud’s first visit, I had felt that all the best of life was mine for the grasping. Now Oliver was dead, and with him my moment of hope and happiness. Long ago on the ship Mr Roberts had commended my resignation as philosophy. But he had been wrong. I had never allowed myself to expect much from life because I was frightened of what would happen to me if my expectations were unfulfilled. But no amount of careful self-deception can protect one from experience. I had found myself and the promise of joy in the strangest quarter and had known that promise voided in the cruellest pain. Sometime, somewhere, a long way from here, the pain would ease, but never again would I experience the ecstasy of those few days when I had realized, and been prepared to admit, my love for Oliver Erskine. I was no longer a girl; I was dowerless, sharp-tongued and plain. And even had I not been all those things, there was only one Oliver Erskine. I would never know his like again. The thought of Charles never crossed my mind.

As I sat there, Mr Harris, the young chaplain, staggered out of the dusk towards me with a handkerchief pressed to his mouth, and subsided on the steps of the verandah, shivering with suppressed nausea. Mr Polehampton, the assistant chaplain, had been dead a fortnight, so now Mr Harris was forced to carry out all the duties of his office alone. It was not the first time I had seen him in this condition; the stench in the graveyard was now so unbearable that every evening poor Mr Harris was rendered violently ill by the time he had finished reading the burial service over those who had died during the day, and people said that often he would get back to his quarters and vomit for a couple of hours at a stretch. I ran into our kitchen and brought him out a mug of water.

He sipped it slowly with his eyes closed, mopping the cold perspiration from his brow, and shuddering as though in ague.

‘Thank you,’ he whispered, putting down the mug. ‘Thank you, Miss Hewitt. I can never get used to it down there. It is truly terrible!’

I nodded sympathetically, and when he made to get up, restrained him with my hand.

‘Sit still a while,’ I begged. ‘A little rest will do you good. Your wife must get so worried seeing you like this. Recover a little first.’

He allowed me to persuade him. ‘Yes. I must say it is pleasant to sit still. I never realize, though, how tired I am until I do sit down, so I try to keep on my feet as a. rule. There is so much to do. I must not stay long; the men in the hospital are expecting me, though with the light gone there is not much I can do for them. Not many of them want to pray!’

‘Well then, to wait won’t hurt them, will it?’ I assured him. He was a fussy, anxious man, but he was doing his best to carry the double load, and I respected him for it.

‘There is more to do than ever now, in the hospital I mean, since the doctors decided that it was no longer proper for the ladies to be there. Letter-writing and so on, which the ladies used to do, falls to my lot now, and with everything else as well …’

‘Letter-writing? But what on earth for, when they can’t be delivered?’

‘Ah, well, the wounded, the dying rather, are sure that we will soon be relieved, and they want their people at home to have a last word from them. It’s natural. Poor fellows, they always want to sound brave and cheerful, so that their families won’t know how bad things have been with us.’

Three widows, one of them Mrs Polehampton, had volunteered to help in the hospital, and had been given a room in the building to save them the risk of crossing the open ground between their quarters and the hospital. Now, so Mr Harris said, the conditions were such that no ladies could be expected to endure them; and, though Mrs Polehampton and her friends had protested, for the last ten days they had been lodged in the Begum Kothi and forbidden to go to the hospital.

‘None of them is strong, you see,’ he said, ‘and two of them are elderly. But they were a help—a great help!’ He sighed resignedly.

As he spoke, an idea came to me—an idea which had been presenting itself half consciously to my mind since I had heard of Oliver’s death. I needed occupation and I had to learn to think of something other than my own heart’s emptiness. Surprising myself almost as much as I surprised Mr Harris, I seized time by the forelock and blurted out, ‘Will they let me do it, Mr Harris, what the other ladies did? I’m young and healthy and have no responsibilities—no ties either,’ I added quickly as he began to expostulate.

‘Oh, my dear young lady!’ Mr Harris was thoroughly shocked. ‘Certainly not! The authorities would never hear of it, and rightly too. After all, the other ladies were much older than you, and experienced. Married, and … and so on. Why, it would be most improper for a young girl …’

‘But, Mr Harris, I am
not
a young girl! I am twenty-four years old. Certainly I am not married, but I can’t help that. And I have done quite a lot of nursing. I looked after my father for two years before he died, and here, when my cousin got cholera, I nursed her too. Oh, Mr Harris, it would be the saving of me if I could do something useful. You have no idea of the boredom and inertia we suffer cooped up with absolutely nothing to do.’

‘I understand, Miss Hewitt, and I must commend your wish to help others, but really, you have no idea … This is no well-ordered, adequately provisioned hospital that we have here. We lack everything, medicines, bedding—even clothes for the wounded. No, no, Miss Hewitt! You must put it out of your head.’

I could have shaken the silly man. He thought I would have the vapours at the sight of a naked male. Perhaps I would indeed—the first time. But I would recover myself and get used to it.

‘Now listen, Mr Harris, please,’ I begged, ‘I’m a practical sort of person, and reasonably steady. Honestly I am. I know what you are thinking—that I will be shocked. But I won’t! I’ve seen many worse things than naked bodies, or even wounded ones …’

‘Indeed she has, Mr Harris,’ Kate said calmly, as she seated herself beside us. ‘She has even killed a man. I’d take her if I were you. She don’t weaken easily and I’ll be glad to come along with her.’

‘Mrs Barry, Mrs Barry, I would have expected you to support me, and here you are in collusion with the young lady! But surely you see the impropriety of even suggesting it?’