Flood of Fire (52 page)

But after the arrival of the British fleet there was a change in the atmosphere: when rumours of attacks on foreigners began to circulate, Fitcher insisted that she carry pistols with her. She decided to indulge him, knowing that it would set his mind at rest – but still, she never imagined that there would come a day when she might actually have reason to be glad that she was armed. But so it did.

It happened at the end of a day's work, when Paulette was heading back from the nursery. On reaching the beach where the
Redruth
's longboat was to meet her, she found an odd-looking stranger sitting on the sand, with his arms wrapped around his knees.

It was rare for that beach to attract visitors and the few who came were usually local fishermen. But this man appeared to be a foreigner: he was dressed in trowsers, a shabby jacket and a hat.

In the meantime he too had spotted her and risen to his feet. She saw now that even though he was dressed in European clothes he was not a white man, as she had thought – the cast of his countenance was distinctly Chinese. He was no longer young, yet not quite in middle age, with sunken cheeks and eyes, and a wispy beard. There was something unkempt and a little disturbing about his appearance; Paulette was concerned enough that she opened the flap of her satchel, so that her pistols would be in easy reach.

Then a look entered the man's eye that sent a jolt through her, reminding her of another encounter at that beach, the year before. Then too she had been recognized by someone who had sparked not the faintest glimmer of recognition in her own eyes.

‘Miss Paulette?'

Raising his hat, the man bowed, in such a manner that the greeting was at once both European and Chinese.

‘Forgive me,' said Paulette. ‘Do I know you?'

‘My name is Ephraim Lee,' he said gravely, holding his hat over his chest. ‘People call me Freddie. But maybe you remember me by another name, lah? Ah Fatt – from the
Ibis
.'

Ciel!
Paulette's hand flew to her mouth, which had fallen open in amazement. ‘But how did you recognize me?'

He smiled. ‘The
Ibis
– it has tied us all together in strange ways, ne?'

She had only set eyes on him from afar before, and the thing she remembered about his appearance was a vague sense of menace, exuded not just by his angular, unsmiling face, but also by the sinuous vigour of his musculature. But she could see none of that menace now, either in his face or in the way he carried himself – rather it was he who seemed to be menaced, hunted.

‘What brings you here, Mr Lee?'

‘For a long time I have been looking for this place, eh, Miss Paulette.'

‘Oh? You had been here before perhaps?'

He shook his head. ‘No. But I had seen it, ne?' He said it as though it were self-evident.

‘How? When?'

‘In dreams. When I saw it today, I recognized – I knew, this was where the body of Mr Bahram Moddie was found. You were there that day, ne? Mr Karabedian, my godfather, he tell me so.'

Suddenly Paulette remembered that this man was the natural son of Mr Moddie: Neel had mentioned this the morning the body was found.

‘I am sorry for your loss, Mr Lee.'

He acknowledged this by tipping his hat. As he was making the gesture Paulette noticed that there was a distinct tremor in his hand. He too seemed to be aware of it, for he put his hands together, as if to steady them. Then he inclined his head towards a shaded spot, under an overhang of rock. ‘Miss Paulette – maybe we can sit there for a few minutes? Maybe you can tell me what you saw that day, eh? When my father's body was found?'

She could see no reason to object: ‘Yes, I will tell you what I remember.'

They seated themselves on a patch of wild grass and she told him how she had come down to the beach that day, to find a group of men, Indians, kneeling around a bare-bodied corpse. To her surprise, one of them had come towards her, with a look of recognition in his eye.

‘Neel?'

‘Yes, Neel – but he told me not to use that name.'

He nodded and fell silent. After a while, in a voice that was taut with apprehension, he said: ‘Miss Paulette, one thing I would like to ask you. That morning, lah, did you see a ladder, hanging from my father's ship?'

With a start Paulette realized that she had omitted this important detail – the dangling rope-ladder that had drawn her eye to the
Anahita
that morning. The sight had puzzled her: why would a ladder be left dangling above the water? Who could have used it and for what?

‘Yes, there was a ladder,' she said. ‘I saw it hanging from the stern of Mr Moddie's ship. How did you know?'

‘I see it too sometimes,' he said. ‘In my dreams, lah.'

Turning towards her he asked, in a shaky voice: ‘Miss Paulette, will you mind if I smoke, eh?'

‘No.' She thought he would take out a wad of tobacco – but instead he reached into his jacket and pulled out a long pipe and a small brass box.

All at once everything fell into place: the quivers, the twitching, the gauntness of his face. She understood that he was an addict, and withdrew slightly. Yet her gaze was drawn back towards him with a new curiosity.

In the last few weeks, ever since she received Zachary's letter, Paulette had given a great deal of thought to opium and its curative properties. The letter had come as a terrible shock: it wasn't only that she had been wounded by it; she had also been forced to ask herself whether her fondest hopes and beliefs were nothing but delusions and pipe-dreams. She had remembered how, on reaching Mauritius, she had gone to the Botanical Gardens at Pamplemousses, to wait for Zachary; she remembered her joy when
she found the garden abandoned and overgrown – this, it had seemed to her, was an Eden after her own heart, where she would happily await her Adam. She had decided that theirs would be a romance to surpass even that of Paul and Virginie, whose fate had so often moved her to tears – for their love would be freely and willingly consummated. Here, in this garden, she would joyfully take Zachary into her arms and they would be wedded under the stars, in body and in soul, on an island of their own imagining, far from the imprisoning imperatives of the world, their fates decided only by their own volition, their bodies joined together by that ecstatic, vital urgency that was the true and pure essence of life itself.

She had wandered through the abandoned house of the Garden's former curator until she came to a room that she knew would be the perfect setting for their first night together. On the floor she had made a nest, not a bed – because in Eden, surely, there were no beds? – and she had strewn flowers over the sheets and hung garlands of boys-love on the windows. She remembered how she had wept that night and the next, and the next, when Zachary had not come; and yet those nights had not been lost either, because she had reimagined them many times in her mind's eye – when she pictured herself seeing Zachary again, it was always on an island, with both of them in shirts and breeches, running hungrily towards each other.

There was a time when she had joyfully embraced these memories – but after receiving Zachary's letter, with its unexplained repudiation; after trying and failing to understand what could have caused his change of heart, she had come to be filled with shame, and also a loathing of her own foolishness and naivete, a feeling so intense that she had longed to find some escape. She watched in fascination now as Freddie roasted a tiny droplet of opium and inhaled the smoke. She saw that its effect was almost immediate: his twitch disappeared and his hands seemed steadier. He closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths before he spoke again.

‘Miss Paulette, why a ladder, lah? What was it for?'

‘I don't know,' she said. ‘I too have wondered what it was for.'

He smiled dreamily. ‘When
Anahita
comes back maybe then we find out, ne?'

‘Is the
Anahita
coming back?'

‘Yes,' he said. ‘Is coming – I have seen it in dreams.'

They sat for a while in companionable silence: for the first time since she had received Zachary's letter Paulette felt at peace. She sensed in Freddie a void far deeper than that which the letter had created in herself, and it conjured up a powerful sense of kinship, overlaying the bond that already existed between them, the bond of the
Ibis
.

Had there been time she might have asked for a taste of his opium pipe – but just then she spotted the
Redruth
's longboat, coming to fetch her from the island.

*

A week after the fleet's departure for the north, Kesri learnt that Captain Smith, the CO of the southern sector, had decided that it was time for the Bengal sepoys to move off the
Hind
: they were to set up camp on an island called Saw Chow.

Kesri received the news with whole-hearted relief – after so many months on the
Hind
nothing could be more welcome than the prospect of a move to dry land. But his jubilation ebbed when he went to the island for an exploratory visit, with Captain Mee.

Saw Chow was not far from Hong Kong: it lay halfway up the Pearl River estuary, in a cove that was known as Tangku Bay to foreigners. To the south lay the crag of Lintin island; to the north was the promontory of Tangku, where a detachment of Chinese soldiers could be seen going through their drills. Saw Chow itself was a desolate, windswept little island: there were no trees on its three shallow hills, and scarcely any vegetation either. A less hospitable place was hard to imagine, but orders were orders so they had no choice but to make the best of it.

They picked a site in a hollow between two hills and marked out the lines for the sepoys' and officers' tents. The next day a team of khalasis, thudni-wallahs, dandia-porters and tent-pitchers went over to set up the camp. A few days later the whole unit moved over to the island, sepoys, camp-followers and all, with their baggage, equipment and armaments.

Once installed in the camp, their lives settled quickly into a routine of drills and inspections in the early morning: the rest of
the day was spent in waiting out the heat as best they could, under the scant cover of their canvas tents.

Every few days the officers would escape to Macau or Hong Kong Bay, but for the sepoys and camp-followers there was no such relief: for them the island was a prison-camp, a place of grinding monotony and discomfort. Other than occasional visits from bumboats there were no diversions.

One day, trying to think of ways to relieve the tedium, Kesri came up with the idea of digging a wrestling pit. Captain Mee readily gave his approval and Kesri went to work immediately: with the help of a few sepoys and camp-followers he dug a pit in a spot that looked across the sparkling blue waters of the estuary. It took a few days to properly prepare the soil, by mixing it with turmeric, oil and ghee; when the pit was ready Kesri inaugurated it himself, with a prayer to Hanumanji.

Once again, the pit had just the effect that Kesri had hoped for, channelling energies, creating camaraderie, and giving the men something to look forward to every day. If anything the impact here was even greater than at Calcutta, for Kesri made sure that the camp-followers were allowed to participate, sweepers, dhobis, barbers and all. A few sepoys were put out by this but Kesri silenced them by citing the inviolable ethic of the akhara, in which worldly rank had no place and all men were considered equal. As for the objection that the camp-followers would not be able to match the sepoys in strength, this too was quickly disproved: several of the gun-lascars, golondauzes and bhishtis were large, brawny men, more than able to hold their own in the pit.

Soon word of the pit spread beyond the island and one day a few Royal Marines came across and asked to participate. But it turned out that they were interested in the Angrezi kind of pugilism – mainly boxing, a form of combat that was abhorrent to Kesri, who saw it as no better than mere
marpeet
or brawling. Kesri told the marines that if they wanted to enter this pit they would have to abide by its rules. They took this in good spirit and became welcome additions to the widening circle of wrestlers.

One day, on returning from a visit to Hong Kong Bay, Captain Mee announced that a young Parsi merchant had just arrived from Manila, on his own ship: amongst his crew there was a lascar who
was said to be a trained wrestler. The young Parsi was a great lover of sport and was keen to see how his lascar fared in the pit.

It so happened that the festival of Nag Panchami was just a few days away. This being an occasion of great significance for wrestlers Kesri had planned a tournament to mark the day: only the more accomplished wrestlers were to participate in this special dangal. He told Captain Mee that the lascar was welcome to try his luck.

The dangal was well under way when a cutter, rowed by a dozen oarsmen, drew up. A square-jawed, broad-shouldered young man got out and went to shake hands with Captain Mee – he was dressed in Western clothes and to Kesri's eye he looked every inch an Angrez. But when Captain Mee brought him over Kesri understood that he was the Parsi shipowner that he had mentioned: his name was Dinyar Ferdoonjee.

After exchanging a few words with Kesri, the young merchant gestured in the direction of his cutter: the wrestler, he said, was one of the oarsmen on his boat. There was no need to point the man out: even while seated he towered over the other rowers. When he started to rise it was as though his body were slowly unfolding, like a ladder with multiple sections. Once he was fully upright his shoulders were seen to be almost as broad as the boat; as for the oar, it looked like a piece of kindling in his hands. Unlike most lascars, he was dressed not in jama-pyjamas but in grey trowsers and a white shirt, which contrasted vividly with his dark skin. His head was of a piece with his frame, square, broad and massive – but as if to compensate for his intimidating dimensions, the expression on his face was one of extreme forbearance and gentleness. In his gait too there was a shambling quality which led Kesri to think that he might be slow of movement, and that his size and weight might be used against him in the pit.