Zemindar Page 15

  We were soon joined by Kate and George Barry, Kate, as always in a high-necked, long-sleeved gown of black, her only concession to the occasion being low black slippers in place of her usual high button-boots. ‘Why, Emily,’ she exclaimed with her customary frankness, ‘you are certainly the loveliest young thing here. A very vision! Laura, just look at how the heads are turning in our direction, though goodness knows, you look so charming yourself tonight I declare half the admiration at least must be for you.’ We laughed, but there was no doubt that Emily was attracting a good deal of notice, something of which that young lady was delightedly aware. The tallest and most graceful female in our party, the pale blue of her gown enhanced the deep blue of her eyes. Her cheeks were flushed with excitement (and a judicious pinch or two in the cloakroom) making her delicate skin whiter than ever.

  I must confess to some complacency regarding my own appearance. The Fates did not bless me with beauty, and I am of too short a stature ever to aspire to true elegance. But my figure was neat and shapely, my coral gown suited my complexion and fitted me excellently, and I knew that few women in the room could match my head of hair, my only outstanding feature, which was long and heavy and glistened with the same dark but ruddy glow as a newly cobbed chestnut. Owning no suitable jewellery, my only ornaments were a corsage of fresh, deep-coral japonica from Kate’s garden, and a matching wreath in my hair. A glimpse of myself in a cheval glass left me content with my overall appearance, and it was with a light heart that I surrendered my programme and its small gold pencil to Captain Fanning, who was the first to claim a dance. I would have preferred not to be the first of the party on the floor but, having no reason to refuse the gentleman other than a desire not to upset Emily, I allowed myself to be led away.

  Captain Fanning was hardly a conquest. He was a goodnatured ninny, who thought I must be flattered by his opinion that I was the most ‘fetching spin’ in the Station that winter. His manner, however, was so guileless that I made an effort to appear as pleased as he thought I should be. As a dancer he was erratic, but he was a great gossip and, before returning to my party, I had learned that our host, Mr Jackson, was the most ill-tempered and contentious man in India and that no one could serve under him and survive for more than six months, except for Mr Gubbins, the Financial Commissioner, and he only because he was Mr Jackson’s match. ‘Fight like a couple of toms on a roof,’ remarked my informant. ‘Old Buggins is all bounce and blow and too conceited to admit that he’s anyone’s subordinate, so he has Jackson hopping like a flea on a hot brick.’ He pointed Mr Gubbins out to me, a portly man dancing with measured deliberation, and wearing on his round red face that expression of patriarchal but brittle benevolence that can only be achieved by the pompous.

  I returned to my place in good humour. But in my absence something had gone awry. Emily, whom I had expected to be dancing, was seated on a sofa against the wall, with Kate Barry next to her and Charles standing stiffly, almost at attention, beside them.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked, as Captain Fanning handed me to a chair. ‘Why ever aren’t you up and dancing?’

  Captain Fanning bowed and took himself off for further conquests, as Kate answered drily, ‘Charles feels it would not be the thing for Emily to dance tonight.’ Charles himself said nothing, but Emily looked at me with eyes swimming in tears.

  ‘Oh surely, Charles,’ I protested too hastily, ‘there can be nothing amiss with Emily dancing—at least with you.’

  ‘And if she dances with me, can she refuse to dance with any other man?’ he pointed out shortly, but with truth.

  ‘But …’ I began, but he silenced me.

  ‘We have already been over the matter, Laura, and Emily knows my wishes.’

  I was quite sure she had not known them when we set out, or she would sooner have stayed at home. As it was, her position was ridiculous: the prettiest girl in the room sitting like a wall-flower guarded by an obviously ill-tempered husband.

  ‘We do not intend to stay long,’ Charles went on, as though to mitigate the sentence he had imposed. ‘Directly after supper we shall return home, but you, of course, can come back later with the Averys.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said coldly. ‘And in the meantime may I suggest that it might improve matters for all of us if we moved to one of the side rooms where there are light refreshments. We can at least seem to be happily employed—eating!’

  So we moved. Charles provided us with ices, and then, when Connie and Wallace joined us, suggested to Wallace a saunter through the cardrooms; they made their way out through the crowd, and we four females were left to our own devices, with the tantalising strains of a waltz audible over the chatter and laughter. Having danced once with his wife, Wallace was now intent upon the tables, and I knew we would not be able to count on much male company for the rest of the evening, which now loomed ahead as a desert of frustration and boredom. I had not the heart to dance myself when poor Emily was forbidden the pleasure. Two or three other ladies came to speak to us after a time, and while they occupied Emily and Connie with small talk—they were tactful and did not ask why Emily was not dancing—I had a quiet word with Kate.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked.

  ‘Och, woman dear, very little.’ And she shrugged her shoulders expressively, speaking behind her fan. ‘I told Charles to be a man and take his wife on to the floor, and he just said that Emily would not think of dancing at the moment. That was how he put it. Poor Emily, she looked quite stricken. I thought she would flare up and object. I know I would have, and she looked as though she would like to, but Charles bent down and whispered something and, well, that was that! Never heard such nonsense in my life. After all, the infant is still a secret, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not any more apparently. Emily was told recently by Mrs Barnum that it would be “indelicate” for her to dance tonight, so I expect all Mariaon knows about it. But we had both hoped that Charles … well, that Charles would not think about the matter as Mrs Barnum had.’

  ‘Indelicate is it, then? Pooh! Old women’s nonsense and nothing more! The girl is as fit as a fiddle, young and lovely and dying to dance, and to my mind that husband of hers is a sight too fond of the proprieties.’

  I had to agree, and caught myself reflecting on how much my own ideas regarding Charles, and many other things, had changed over the last several months. A short time ago Charles’s dictum on any subject under the sun had been my law, but now here I was allowing him to be criticized, joining in that criticism, without a thought. I was glad to recognize my return to common sense, and at the same time reluctant to admit to it completely, so I said as primly as was in me, ‘He would be wrong not to consider his wife’s reputation, surely?’

  ‘Maybe,’ agreed Kate without enthusiasm, ‘but he forgets that she is a very young girl as well as his wife, and I declare that music is making even my old foot tap as briskly as a castanet. No, it’s cruel he is to the child. Downright cruel!’

  ‘Oh, look!’ Connie broke into our private confabulation. ‘Here’s a whole tray of champagne. I declare I could do with something to freshen my spirits a little. Wally and Charles are so naughty to leave us all alone; we’ll just have to signal for some ourselves.’ And she stood up and waved her moth-eaten ostrich fan at the resplendent scarlet-and-gold minion who bore the tray. The champagne was iced and entirely delectable at that unhappy moment. Even Emily cheered up as she sipped it, and we all became more animated, despite the horrid dearth of male company. I felt, wrongly, no doubt, that every eye was upon our curious little knot of ill-assorted women, and that everyone wondered why we were not taking a more active part in the jollifications, so that when at last the men rejoined us to take us into supper, I was so relieved I almost forgave them their neglect.

  Our absence from the dance floor had meant that my programme remained unfilled, and I was chagrined at the prospect of going into supper without a supporting male arm. But luck was with me. Captain Fanning, seeing me unattached as we crossed t
he lawn to the Banqueting Hall where the supper was laid, joyfully demanded the honour of waiting upon me. His relief in finding a lady unbooked for the supper dance to escort was equalled only by mine in being escorted.

  The Banqueting Hall comprised the lower portion of a long, arcaded building of two storeys, the upper floor, so Captain Fanning informed me, being guest rooms for important visitors. The long chamber was crowded to suffocation, and almost as we entered we lost sight of the others in our party, but Captain Fanning, fired by the unexpected clemency of the Fates in providing him with a partner, pushed and shoved a way for us through the throng, and found me, to his own obvious surprise, a very pleasant seat beside one of the windows giving on to the wide verandah. The window was open, and the soft night air, laden with the scent of trampled grass, damp earth, night-blooming flowers and the musky smell of the river, was grateful to my flushed cheeks and exacerbated temper.

  What a fiasco the whole affair had proved! I was so sure I would enjoy this ball, and yet I had danced only once. I was almost in a mood to indulge in sententious reflections on the vanity of life, so when Captain Fanning left to fetch me something to eat, I was glad of the resulting solitude which would allow me to compose myself. I leant my head against the window frame and, opening my fan, looked out to the brightly lit windows of the Residency across the lawn, and beyond it to the indigo sky set now with stars and a sickle moon.

  Behind me the babble of conversation and laughter, the clink of glasses and cutlery, faded as I turned my head and attention away and became engrossed in my own discontented musings. But after a short interval my mind was brought suddenly back to the present by the sound of two male voices talking desultorily in the semi-gloom of the verandah just outside my field of vision.

  ‘… nothing of much significance in its own right, but put the lot together and I believe we have an indication of what is in the native mind.’

  A deep, pleasant voice this, speaking in a tone of decision. I began to listen consciously.

  ‘Hm. We are aware of something like it here too, among the men. A sense of unease more than anything else. Not troublesome, but disturbing, at least to those of us to whom the Baba-log are capable of normal, human reactions.’

  This second voice was precise in diction and pitched in a higher key than the other. It was not hard to guess it belonged to a military man.

  ‘To my way of thinking, it is only a matter of time before the whole situation boils over,’ said the deep voice.

  ‘You croak like a raven.’

  ‘Perhaps, but that is what I believe, and I also believe that we don’t have much time. Anything could start it off. All that is needed is a focal point, some cause common to the lot of them.’

  ‘Nothing can be common to all in this country.’

  ‘What about a grievance?’ the first man asked thoughtfully. ‘And, good God, I’d have thought they had enough of those already. Every section of the population in this province has enough of the sort of grievance that should send a government toppling; that would in a European country.’

  ‘Oh, come now, my dear chap, surely that’s a little extreme? A certain amount of disaffection due to annexation is inevitable. But what alternative was there, after all?’

  ‘It’s a lot more than “disaffection”. Annexation was an injustice to every man in the kingdom, one way or the other. In the mofussil the talukhdars are virtually dispossessed or labouring under crippling difficulties. Damn it all, it’s not only their prerogatives but their livelihood that that fool Thomason with his reforms and his notions on equitable settlement would take from them. And the villager is no better off for the dubious privilege of now owning his own land—the revenue bands see to that. With their guns and flaming torches, their methods of extortion are a damn sight worse than any talukhdar’s, and they give no protection in return, as the talukhdars did. Truth is, they go in fear of their lives from the city magistrates themselves. And here in the city—well, you can see for yourself—the people are crawling with poverty, and not only the lower, helpless castes and classes either. We have exiled their fool of a king and yes, I know, I know, he was corrupt and dissolute and had been given ample warning of the measures that would be taken against him. But who amongst his people believed that we had the right to dispossess him, however he behaved? But what has happened to his family, his retainers, his army, his squads of useless officials? They are still there, in that city below us, begging their bread because Lord Dalhousie omitted to realize that they too are human. They still have to live somewhere, to eat sometimes, but Lord Dalhousie forgot them, as the populace among whom they drag out their miserable existence cannot forget them, or ignore their indignities, or overlook the contemptuous manner in which they have been jettisoned!’

  ‘True, unfortunately true,’ agreed the soldier. ‘It was a most ill-advised move.’

  ‘Ill-advised! Criminal folly! Short-sighted stupidity!’ I liked the vehemence of the deep voice.

  ‘And, my God, what have they done with Wajid Ali’s army? Disbanded some to swell the want in the villages, and enlisted the rest in our own ranks!’

  ‘Surely that at least was constructive?’

  ‘Surely!’ The voice now was heavy with sarcasm. ‘It’s always possible to serve two masters, and in military matters no doubt desirable. Not a year ago those sepoys out there were lounging about the Hazrat Ganj, out of elbow, unpaid, but nevertheless part of the forces of their rightful king. They are not going to forget that when trouble comes; they will be in no two minds as to where their loyalties lie. But we, we British—almost, Cussens, I am impelled to say you British—expect those loyalties, the loyalties of a lifetime, to be overlaid by an extra shilling a month, which, I am told, is all they get in the way of benefit from us.’

  ‘Well—yes. I must admit your point.’ The military voice was a hint impatient. ‘But damn it all, man, it’s not as though these things aren’t realized in Calcutta.’

  ‘If they were realized, why were they permitted?’

  ‘I feel you take too gloomy a view of the whole situation.’

  ‘Easy enough to feel that living here in your smug little world of perfunctory parades, balls and tea-drinkings with the ladies. Things are otherwise where I am, Cussens; I cannot overlook the obvious.’

  ‘What brought you in anyway? You don’t often honour us with your presence.’

  ‘Oh, you could call it a family matter. But I had ignored so many invitations that I felt I had better make an obeisance to Mammon in the form of our revered Chief Commissioner.’

  ‘Damn fellow is going shortly, so rumour has it.’

  ‘Thank God for small mercies, eh?’

  ‘Precisely.’ And the two men laughed together in a manner which indicated a long and comfortable acquaintance. There was a pause in the conversation.

  Presently, as I waited unashamedly to hear more, the deep voice came from another angle. The man must have moved over to a further window, and from what followed was standing looking in at the supper room.

  ‘Come here a moment, Cussens. Look, and tell me what you see.’

  There was the creak of a cane chair and a pause as ‘Cussens’ made his way over to the window.

  ‘See? Why, a very jolly occasion, surely. People enjoying themselves, all that.’

  ‘And I see emotion.’

  ‘Don’t know what you’re driving at, old man. Know you don’t care for the ladies yourself, but surely men have a right to have their wives and daughters with them?’

  ‘Every right. No doubt about that, unfortunately. It’s the consequences of that right that I am thinking of. If there is going to be any form of trouble, and you and I are both agreed that trouble of some sort must come, those females in there are going to complicate matters no end. When men kill men, it’s merely war. But when men kill women, well—it becomes martyrdom, massacre and mayhem, and everything gets out of proportion.’

  ‘Oh, come now. I cannot let you away with that. I agree tha
t the province is unquiet and there may be trouble of some sort, but really that’s a very different thing to expecting war, or any sort of organized violence. That I do not expect, and I cannot have you running off with the idea that I do.’

  ‘Well, I must hope that you are right and I am wrong. But mark my words, if things do develop in the direction I believe they are going, all those white doll-faces in there, with their ridiculous garments and absurd airs, are going to be no joke. Deuce take it, don’t you see you have too many of ’em?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, none of them are “mine”,’ the soldier said acidly.

  ‘What does that matter, when it is you who will pay the piper for them anyway?’

  ‘I believe, my dear chap, that you are more worried on your own behalf than on mine! Now what you should do is settle yourself up with a nice young girl while you are in Lucknow, and then I’ll wager I’d hear no more nonsense from you about there being too many of our females with us!’

  ‘Cussens, Cussens, don’t you know me yet? And to think that you and I have run the gauntlet of matrimony successfully, neck and neck, for so many years …’

  ‘Ah, but I thank heavens I’m too old, but you …’ And they moved away chuckling amicably together so that I could hear no more.

  But I was left with a vivid recollection of Mr Roberts and his explanation of the uneasy state of Oudh. He, too, according to Mr Chalmers, had ‘croaked like a raven’, and when Captain Fanning returned to me with two laden plates, I found it difficult to keep my mind on what he was saying as I tried to remember exactly what Mr Roberts had told me. The man with the deep voice had echoed most faithfully his general sentiments, of that I had no doubt, and a small chill of fear ran up the back of my neck as I recalled the words: ‘When men kill women … it’s martyrdom, massacre and mayhem!’

  CHAPTER 13

  When we had eaten, the Barrys, the Floods, Captain Fanning and I sauntered for a while through the Residency gardens to refresh ourselves after the hot and overcrowded supper room. As we paused to admire the pale moonlight on the river, or exchange a few words with acquaintances, I kept a sharp lookout for two gentlemen who would match my mysterious voices on the verandah. The trees were hung with coloured lanterns, small saucer lamps outlined arches and window-frames of the buildings, and these, together with the moonlight, made it possible to remark features even at some distance, but no group we approached included the sort of masculine forms I could imagine speaking in the voices I had so unscrupulously overheard.