A Far Horizon (13 page)

Holwell sat quietly while Bellamy attended to his accounts, taking no offence at this casual treatment. A servant appeared with Madeira and placed it before the Chief Magistrate. Soon the spectre of Siraj Uddaulah faded slightly as the wine eased into his veins. Bellamy’s home was, if anything, hotter than Omichand’s, but no Oriental scents thickened the air. Instead there was the perfume of beeswax and baking bread drifting in from the cookhouse. The notes of a piano, slightly off key, came faintly to the Chief Magistrate from somewhere deep in the house. Bellamy’s daughter, Anna, was at her practice. Holwell breathed in these familiar things and was slowly returned to himself.

The room was dim, the tatties already down to repel the glare of the sun. Only Bellamy, in need of light, was forced to sit in a searing beam, squinting at his ledgers. About him the room was in disarray. Stacks of books occupied all available places. Tattered hymnbooks and copies of the Bible of selected sizes were piled next to a variety of religious discourses. Alongside these stood ledgers containing a record of the Chaplain’s years in trade.

The Chaplain spent the greater part of his day buried in the concerns of commerce. He was a cleric of the old school, not yet touched by new-fangled ideas about converting the Hindus. The Company policy was for a quiet life of profit, leaving heathens free to be heathens and chaplains free to trade if they pleased. Bellamy flew about in untidy fashion, his coat flapping open, his face wet with sweat, never a Bible to hand when he needed it, juggling the cares of trade with the cares of God. There was a well-stretched magnanimity about the Chaplain that came from the difficult art of balancing his religious duties to the Company’s servants, his successful sorties into commerce and the responsibility of owning the best cellar of claret in town. Like everyone else in Calcutta, the Chaplain used the financial services of Omichand to underwrite his business ventures.

At last, with a sigh, the Chaplain blotted the page and looked up at Holwell. ‘What is the good of accountants who cannot add up their sums? Here, you see, a single mistake and my stock appears to be lessened by a hundred and fifty bottles of claret.’ Bellamy slammed shut the ledger and reached for the Madeira. As soon as he sipped it he frowned.

‘This is of mixed vintage. Let us fetch another bottle,’ he insisted.

‘Siraj Uddaulah threatens to come down upon us,’ Holwell confided as he followed the Chaplain out of the house into the baking sun. ‘It is said that already he approaches Kasimbazar. He is annoyed about our excavations. And this business with Kishindas is the very devil.’

Soon they reached Bellamy’s cellar, a low-roofed building beside the cookhouse. A servant ran ahead to light the flares in the chamber below.

‘Kasimbazar?’ The Chaplain stopped in alarm and turned to face Holwell. ‘He must be stopped at all costs.’

Bellamy entered his cellar and began to climb down the narrow stairwell. Navigating the steep flight of stairs behind him, Holwell looked down upon the Chaplain’s balding pink skull, and was
reminded of a coconut. Then the sun was blotted out as the cellar claimed them.

Soon they reached the bottom of the steps. The Chaplain’s cellar was extensive and was housed in a wide tunnel that ran from beneath Bellamy’s home to below the church. Sometimes, whilst delivering a sermon in St Ann’s, Bellamy’s thoughts plunged down, straight as a plumb line between his feet, to the racks of wine laid out beneath him. He knew exactly over what vintage he stood, and whether it was claret or Madeira, Marsala or Shiraz.

Within the cellar Holwell could only just stand erect. The cramped confines of the place and the overpowering scent of soil and brick heated by the light of the flares filled him with sudden
claustrophobia
. He made an effort to control his feelings, but the confined space seemed only to echo the weight of the morning, still pressing upon his nerves. Once more his anxiety about Siraj Uddaulah
overwhelmed
him. Wherever he turned he was trapped.

The Chief Magistrate wished badly to unload himself of his difficult interview with Omichand. There was no one else he cared to speak to other than the Chaplain. Bellamy’s advice was always of such a sensible nature and so in keeping with the Chief Magistrate’s own thoughts that Holwell always marvelled that he had not himself thought of the things Bellamy pointed out. Yet now, for the first time, his tongue was tied. Besides the Council of Fort William, who had been told of developments upon Holwell’s return from Murshidabad, and who would eventually have a share in the Young Begum’s treasure, no one in Calcutta knew the real reason for Kishindas’s presence.

‘How is the nawab to be stopped?’ Holwell worried.

‘Cease all excavations at once,’ Bellamy warned. ‘And if this nobleman Kishindas being here irks the nawab, order the fat merchant to throw him out. Why cause bad feelings during this transfer of power in Murshidabad?’

Bellamy reached out and picked up a bottle, holding it beneath his bulbous nose, squinting at the label. He replaced the bottle and
picked up another. Soon he found the vintage he wanted and they climbed back up the cellar stairs to emerge again into the sun. The Chaplain called for the bottle to be decanted immediately and brought to his study.

‘Was this not worth the journey?’ Bellamy sat back in his chair when the wine appeared and sipped testingly at the Madeira.

Holwell raised his glass to his lips but could not say he found a great difference. As they sat in silence, a gust of hot wind lifted a tattie at the window. A sudden wave of fetid air drifted into the room. The wind had changed direction and now blew the stench of the Salt Lakes upon them. The Chief Magistrate was again reminded that his future now sailed upon a similar corruption. He and Drake had not only accepted the silken purse of gold coins but already divided it between them. Whatever he did, wherever he went, intrigue and duplicity would stalk him now and could not be turned away.

J
aya Kapur squatted outside the room of William Dumbleton. Two Englishmen sat on a bench nearby, also waiting to see the Notary. They observed Jaya with affronted expressions, as if she no right to be in the Courthouse. Eventually they removed themselves to the furthest end of the bench. In the presence of the Hatmen it was aways the same. She must hold on to the knowledge of who she was as these men held on to their hats in a wind. Beneath the severity of their gaze she saw herself with the Englishmen’s eyes, as a repository of malignant power, unrecognisable in all ways. She felt at once cut adrift from herself, an exile from her own soul. Outside the door of the Notary she seemed to shrink. She continued to glare at the Englishmen until they looked away.

One by one the waiting men were summoned by the Notary and disappeared through his door. Although the smell of the Courthouse terrified her, Jaya was determined to show no weakness. An odour of impenetrability surrounded her, of thick clothes, efficiency and heavy wood. There were things in this smell she could not even name and that now worked to diminish her further. She had seen the Notary the evening of the seance in Rita’s home and taken little notice of him. The things that had happened since that evening had now led her to his room.

She rolled her prayer beads between her fingers, whispering the Goddess’s name. Her greatest fear was that Chief Magistrate Holwell would suddenly appear and throw her out. As she had approached the Courthouse she had seen him standing before the building, talking to a group of men. She drew back behind a banyan tree and watched in trepidation. The Chief Magistrate’s shadow spread out behind him, sliding smoothly over the road. In just such a manner, thought Jaya, the power of the magistrate moved over the town and could not be evaded. Perhaps in the place of grey skies where Mr Holwell came from shadows were faint or even unseen. But in the sharp, hot light of Calcutta they grew out of a man in a powerful way. The shadows of the Hatmen were tall and alien in shape. Sometimes the sun fell on to a knot of White Town men, merging their shadows together. Then this dark pool, devoid of even a crack of light, filled her with anxiety. If three or four men could produce a shadow of such density, the combined shadows of all of White Town would be longer and blacker than the darkest night. Soon the Chief Magistrate had entered the Courthouse, and after a safe interval Jaya had followed. Now, remembering his presence in the building, she clutched her prayer beads tighter and called on the Goddess again. Eventually, a
peon
stuck his head out of the door and announced her name.

William Dumbleton looked up from behind his table. The papers before him stated that a Janet Jenkins wished to bring a lawsuit against Fabian Demonteguy. The Notary had expected an
Englishwoman
. He tried not to show his surprise as Jaya entered. This was difficult, for her appearance could not be ignored. Above her sari she wore her feathered hat as a badge of her right to be in White Town. The hat had been acquired many years before, at the time of her marriage to a Mr Locke. There had been a riding habit to go with it then, and although Jaya had never sat upon a horse, she had worn the habit once or twice for the titillation of Mr Locke.

The hat was the first thing Mr Dumbleton noticed as Jaya made her way towards him. A stout cockerel appeared to bear down upon
him. Looking hurriedly at the paper again he saw the woman was listed as
née
Kapur, also previously as Walsh, Locke and then Jenkins. Never before had an Indian woman approached him in his room like this. And what had she to do with Demonteguy, to whose home his wife had recently dragged him for some outrageous seance?

‘You have many aliases,’ he stated, keeping his eyes on the paper.

‘All are the names of my English husbands,’ the woman replied.

Dumbleton nodded. Few Englishwomen had the courage to venture out to India, risking both life and sanity. Dumbleton was one of the lucky few who had an English wife beside him. Others, with the Company’s blessing, found varying solutions to the state of bachelorhood. Some wealthy Company men kept seraglios of native women in the Moslem style. A few married Indian women legally. Most, however, whatever their rank, were encouraged to take Indian women as temporary wives during their stay in the country. This woman, Dumbleton suspected, looking once more at Jaya, must have been the common-law wife of a low-ranking English or European soldier and lived in a hut near the barracks. The only idea of morality these poor creatures had was the rule that, whilst engaged in a relationship with one man, they should be faithful to him for as long as he lived in India. Once a husband died or left the country, they were forced for survival to form a further union with another European man or resort to the brothels of Black Town. And the children – Dumbleton did not really know what happened to the children, except that there now appeared to be a growing community of Anglo-Indians in Calcutta at every rung of the economic ladder. They seemed to fit nowhere in either Black or White Town but formed an island on their own. At times he had heard of certain Christian-minded Englishwomen in White Town attempting to establish orphanages for the more unfortunate children. The mortality rate was so high in the European community that many of these good ladies perished before their deeds took root.

‘You may sit if you wish,’ the Notary instructed.

The woman stood squarely before his table with a concentration
that made him uneasy. Her flesh hung about her in such abundance that he was reminded of a mountain of soft sponges he had once seen harvested upon a beach. Ignoring the chair, she squatted down on the floor, rearranging her sari. Dumbleton leaned forward to keep her in view. His table was high and wide and all he could see of the woman were the long brown quills of her hat shifting below him in a threatening way. He felt this an unsatisfactory manner in which to conduct an interview.

‘It might be better if you would sit upon the chair,’ Dumbleton suggested.

After some hesitation, Jaya heaved herself up and sat on the chair. Her flesh spilt over the frame, like a pot of soup boiling over. Her short legs barely touched the floor and were spread wide apart beneath her muslin sari. Before Dumbleton could proceed with the interview, she began to speak in an agitated manner.

‘They are taking the girl and now they are taking my things. I will bring a suit against them both.’ Jaya’s voice pitched about upon her anger. The tall feathers in her hat rocked perilously.

Mr Dumbleton looked confused. The woman’s English was as raw as her voice, but he saw communication would be possible. ‘Who is
the
girl
,
what are
your
things,
and who are
both
of them? You must explain clearly to me.’

At the Notary’s words and the unexpected patience in his voice, Jaya began to cry; she had anticipated ejection from Mr Dumbleton’s room. She never cried but copiously, and now was no exception.

Dumbleton looked embarrassed. ‘Come, come. How am I to understand if you do not explain?’ Had she been a European woman he might have offered his handkerchief. There was clearly no need in this case, for the woman was already drying her eyes with the end of her sari.

‘That night I too was there, sitting on the back veranda. I saw you then, Notary Sahib. They told me I must not come out into the room; no one must see my face. But my Sati wanted me there. She was so frightened. They could not make me leave her.’

‘What night was this?’ Dumbleton frowned.

‘The night the spirits came into my Sati. She is possessed by a
ferenghi
devil, but I will get it out of her. Sati is my granddaughter,’ Jaya explained.

‘Ah! The night of the seance,’ Dumbleton remembered, and began to make sense of the old woman’s ties to Demonteguy.

‘I saw both the Hatmen together then, that Chief Magistrate Holwell and Demonteguy. He is now my daughter Rita’s husband. He has married her properly, not like my own husbands. That is the only good thing in this marriage, its properness. Her first marriage also was very proper. In this Rita is lucky, unlike me. You must also have seen how Hatman Holwell came into the room. And afterwards, when you were gone, for a long time they were talking together. So quietly, quietly talking and talking. And drinking much arrack also. And then after some days that Chief Magistrate Hatman, he sent his
goondas
to my house to get my diamonds. They made a great noise. They said they would beat me if I did not give them what they wanted. At last they found my things. All the neighbours came to watch. They will bear witness to what was done.’ Jaya began to cry again. Dumbleton held up his hand, still very much confused about events.

‘I think it would be best if you explain from the beginning, then I will understand things better,’ he suggested. The mention of Holwell’s name had immediately interested him. There were many like himself who had had enough of the Chief Magistrate’s
high-handed
ways.

Jaya fell silent for a moment, then decided that the making of her will was the beginning of events. She was pleased to see the concentration with which Mr Dumbleton listened. As she talked, the Notary wrote quickly, the scratch of his quill underpinning her words. Outside the window there was a large tree. Monkeys sat in its branches peering into the Notary’s room with bright-eyed curiosity, while picking lice from each other’s fur. Crowds of monkeys had scampered about the Cutcherry on the day the Chief Magistrate had
summoned her there. Jaya began to tremble as she recounted to Mr Dumbleton the scene at the native court.

*

The Cutcherry, being merely for the trying of native cases, had not the same grandeur as the White Town Courthouse. There were no plaster fleurs-de-lis or Doric pillars, no grand sweep or ornamented staircase. The Cutcherry was an airy building through which sparrows flew freely to nest in the raftered ceiling. Monkeys in their hundreds congregated in the compound and refused to be evicted, claiming the place as their own. They crowded upon the roof and occupied the windowsills like a squabbling, disinterested jury. It was a constant battle to keep them out of the courtroom. Each day the people of Black Town formed a never-ending queue about the building, standing patiently in the sun to speak to a magistrate. They were required to voice their business in a speedy, straightforward way when their turn came.

When at last Jaya had stood once more before the Chief Magistrate, her anger was well fermented. She had not come willingly, she had been summoned. She had seen no need to wear her hat for the lowly confines of the Cutcherry. As Mr Holwell spoke, reviewing her case, Jaya turned her back upon him, watching a mother bird feed its young in a wispy nest high above upon the rafters. Behind her the Chief Magistrate’s voice stabbed the air in a sharp staccato. Jaya had decided not to understand his English, or the words of the interpreter. An old man with a child squatted behind her, waiting his turn with the magistrate. Jaya gave them an encouraging smile, drawing their attention to the sparrows. The old man pointed out the nest to the child, who moved up beside Jaya for a better view. The Chief Magistrate thumped his table with a hammer and glared. Jaya stood before him in a beam of sun; dust motes swirled about her as if circling her in magic light. For a moment she appeared unassailable. Since the evening of the seance, the Chief Magistrate’s nerves were badly shredded, strange thoughts
thrust into his mind. He brought the hammer down loudly once more.

‘Aiee!’ Jaya jumped in an exaggerated way as the hammer struck the table. Her hand flew to her throat in mock terror; the people behind her laughed. The Chief Magistrate thundered in new fury.

‘You were ordered to hand over the inheritance of Sati Edwards, formerly in your charge but now to be under the legal guardianship of her stepfather, Fabian Demonteguy. Where is this inheritance? We have here ready the scales to weigh and assess its value. In the paper pertaining to the inheritance, mention is made of certain diamond items, the value of which has been put at considerable worth. Things of such value should be in the safe keeping of her legal guardian.’ The Chief Magistrate’s voice rose threateningly. Jaya made no answer but returned the magistrate’s glare.

‘If you will not produce the items, then I declare you in contempt of court,’ Holwell roared.

‘I made a will. Such a will is not for acting upon until after my death,’ Jaya shouted.

‘Do not shout in court. Can you read English? Can you write your name?’ Holwell enquired, leaning forward over the table.

For a moment Jaya stiffened, smelling the brew of trickery. ‘What is this reading and writing to do with a will?’ Jaya faced Holwell squarely now, the sparrows forgotten. She had signed the will with a fingerprint.

‘If you cannot read, then how can you be sure you made a will and not something else?’ the Chief Magistrate asked, sitting back in his chair with a satisfied sniff.

He picked up a roll of parchment. ‘I have here a copy of the document. Is this not your fingerprint? This is not a will; it is a making-over of your gems to your granddaughter. Whether before or after your death is not specified.’ He waved the paper in his hand.

‘This they did not tell me.
Badmash
lawyers.’ Jaya grew red in the face. She saw immediately by the look in Holwell’s eyes that this
admission was something she should not have made. The Chief Magistrate pounced at once.

‘Since you are no longer the girl’s legal guardian, her inheritance must be handed over to that person, who is now Mr Demonteguy. You are presently in contempt of court. If the items are not brought quickly to me here, then I will take steps to secure them.’ The Chief Magistrate sat back in his chair and sucked in his cheeks, staring hard at Jaya Kapur.

‘They are my jewels. They belong only to me,’ Jaya screamed. ‘This is all a big play to steal my ornaments and to deprive my Sati of dowry.’

‘Call the next case,’ Holwell ordered.

He watched as Jaya Kapur was dragged away, cursing so loudly that the sparrows above flew out of the Cutcherry in a flurry. A feather dropped on to the Chief Magistrate’s desk, brushing his cheek as it fell.