Nightrunners of Bengal (19 page)

From the gravelled front drive the clop of horses’ hoofs echoed through the Club. Women’s voices rang clear and high on the verandah, and a child’s excited yipping. Torrance shifted his feet uneasily; the set of his rather sulky face and the pout of his full lips showed his resentment of Geoghegan’s earthy gusto.

Geoghegan mopped his brow with a large linen handkerchief. “Here come the petticoats. We’ll have to be goin’ to our duty, Torrance, me boy. Now don’t ask me how I come to hear about the bedpan hurroosh——”

He winked; Rodney remembered with distaste that the brown fifteen-year-old girl who lived in Geoghegan’s compound was said to be the daughter of the Cummings’ butler.

“—but isn’t it perfect? It’s a feud ready-made-to-order, it’ll last for ever, an’ already the ladies are gatherin’ their forces. They’ve even forgotten about Dotty van Steengaard’s breech, an’ the poor filly’s expectin’ any moment now. Ye see, the married women all know about the bedpan but they don’t have to tell their husbands because it’s on the disgustin’ side—and that’s perfect too, because the menfolk might settle it in three minutes.
But
—an’ this is the cream of it—every man will be in one camp or the other, dependin’
on what invitations he accepts in the next two, three weeks, an‘he’ll not be knowin’ a thing! It’s
all
perfect! Now don’t breathe a word. I haven’t told a soul but you two, so sit back and watch the ladies get to work. Come on, Torrance, me boy!”

He smacked his lips over the last of his brandy and walked out, chuckling, Torrance smiling self-consciously at his side. Rodney swished the liquor round in his glass and shook his head. It was funny, but it was tragic too, for he knew that Geoghegan was right. The ladies of Bhowani would worry at the ridiculous incident for months, and be secretively happy, like dogs with a hidden bone. It would be the most important event of their year, the candle which would long hence light the memory of 1857.

The fatigue party should have finished their work by now. He put on his shako and narrowed his eyes against the glare. The sepoys were waiting to be dismissed, standing and squatting in the same loose group under the same trees where they had been when he first saw them. Godse called them to attention; they stiffened. Rodney gestured in salute and moved in under the shade.

“Stand at ease. Thank you, Jemadar-sahib. It seems to have been well done.” He glanced round. “Tell them I said so, please.”

The irregular succession of carriages swept round the curve of the drive. Godse gave a curt command to fall in. As the sepoys stood in the ranks Rodney looked closely at their dark wet faces and saw that their eyes followed the carriages and the children. Their expressions were unusually taut still, but he knew they loved children and they loved a party, and to have the two together would be bliss.

On an impulse he said, “Jemadar-sahib, any men who want to stay and watch the party may do so—but they must keep out of sight, round the end of the lawn here. March off the rest, please.”

They shuffled their feet, and Rodney repeated the permission, adding with a smile, “Come on, my sons. There’ll
be some toys left over for your children.” Several men moved to leave the ranks then, but others were as anxious to dissuade them. Jemadar Godse compressed his lips and said nothing. Naik Parasiya, bursting out with an odd suppressed passion, urged them all to come back to the lines because here they would only get in the sahibs’ way. In the end four or five fell out; the rest marched off at the superquick step of a Rifle regiment, their white trousers jerking away left-right into the fading heat, their knees always a little bent in the Indian manner.

Rodney turned and heard the carpenter’s whine at his back. “Your Majesty, Your Highness, you are my father and my mother …”

“What is it, Piroo?”

“Your Honour is a mighty hunter. Would Your Honour be graciously pleased to come and shoot a tiger out at Devra tonight?”

The words were set in the form that custom demanded, but the tone of voice carried an urgency and, more than that, almost a rasp of command.

Rodney stared at the wrinkled gnome. “How do you know there’s a tiger near Devra? Oh, of course, you own land there, don’t you? But tonight? I can’t possibly. Next time he kills I’d like to, Piroo.”

“Come tonight!”

Piroo spoke harshly, using neither honorific titles nor polite forms. In all the years Rodney had known him it was the first time there had been no grovelling abasement in his voice. He blinked in astonished anger. “It’s impossible. Dismiss!” He nodded curtly and walked away from Piroo towards the carriage porch.

There, at the head of the steps, the members of the ladies’ reception committee were receiving the station, greeting with marmoreal formality people they had seen nearly every day for years past and would see every day for years to come. Mrs. Bulstrode wore russet brown, and the rims of her eyes were as usual a little red. Mrs. Caversham glittered
in an electric blue which emphasized the bony angles of her body; as usual her lips were pursed, and as usual she looked like a soured schoolmistress. Victoria de Forrest stood with them, by right of being her father’s housekeeper. A virginal white dress accentuated the overblown ripeness of her figure. The gossip about her affair with Eddie Hedges was growing virulent, and she held her head up defiantly. All three wore poke bonnets, and lace quilling framed their faces with varied effect. Mrs. Bulstrode fiddled nervously at a brown silk reticule.

As Rodney approached, Captain and Mrs. Ernest Cumming of the 88th stepped out of their victoria and slowly ascended the steps. They were a nice, rather shy pair, he thought, who were turned in on each other by their childlessness—but she
did
carry her nose in the air, now that he looked at it. Perhaps she did it because her husband couldn’t ride a horse like a gentleman; perhaps, if he had been a superb horseman, she would not have acted so foolishly in the matter of the bedpan.

Strange currents stirred the reception committee. Mrs. Caversham froze and stared gelidly at the Cummings as though they were little children detected making a mess in the corner of the classroom. Mrs. Bulstrode scurried forward, stammering an involved and overly warm greeting. Victoria de Forrest opened and shut her mouth, like a voluptuous cod stunned and thrown on the floorboards of a boat. Rodney smiled wryly. By God, Geoghegan had been speaking the unvarnished truth for once; already the sides were drawn up for the Battle of the Bedpan.

The six-year-old Atkinson twins, Tom and Prissy, rushed up and seized his arms. “Uncle Rodney, Uncle Rodney, when’s Robin coming? We want to play with Robin.”

Their eagerness cheered him; he was not related to them, but in India all English children called all English grownups Uncle or Aunt. They had adopted Robin as a wonderful new kind of animated doll. Rodney laughed down at them.

“He’ll be here soon. Let’s go to the swings; that’s where he’ll come.”

“Ooh! Did you put up the swings, Uncle?”

“The sepoys did, Prissy. I—er—told them what to do.”

They pulled him through the scattered groups forming on the grass. Two-Bottle Tom was there, shiny white of skin, atremble and ill, walking a little behind the matronly bulk of his wife. Mother Myers, flushed with pride, hung on her son’s arm and plainly wished he could have been in uniform, like Rodney. At the swings Rodney handed the twins over to Geoghegan and flopped in a chair to watch. Rachel Myers was here too. She stared alternately at Torrance and Geoghegan, and each stare was loaded with soul-force. Only an expert could tell that Torrance basked in ethereal admiration, while Geoghegan wallowed in a bath of mercy and pity. The veterinarian was not an expert; from time to time he glanced nervously at the girl and secretly fingered his clothes to see whether he had left any buttons undone.

The children swung and shouted, and Rodney drooped. Where did that fearful enthusiasm come from? Where along the road from childhood did it vanish? Or did it trickle away all the time, unnoticed, until one day you found you didn’t care a damn about anything? Was it a childish thing to thrill to the ripple of a galloping horse? He licked his lips; he’d like a drink.

The carriages rolled to a stop under the porch. Each woman, with the billows of her crinoline, occupied a seat wide enough for three, while her husband and children huddled opposite. The committee greeted them, and then they came out on to the grass, and when they were close it could be seen that their faces were wet and their hands damp and their dresses already a little crumpled. For a minute or two the children would walk primly beside the parents. As the grown-ups stopped to gossip, the children broke free and ran among the flowerbeds, yelling to each other in Hindustani and English, until their shrill clamour invaded every corner of the lawn. No one could tell boys
and girls below six apart, unless he knew them, because all wore white dresses and several petticoats, and all had long curls flowing over their shoulders. The bigger girls looked like dolls which might have been made by women of another generation, for they were dressed in the adult fashions of twenty years before; their skirts were shorter and less full than the modern crinolines, and showed their pantalettes beneath.

The bigger boys glowered sullenly as “Aunts” exclaimed over their finery. Peter Peckham, aged seven, wore elastic-sided brown boots, cotton stockings barrel-striped in blue and green, full-hipped tartan trousers ending an inch below the knee, a plaid gingham blouse, and a tam o’ shanter with a cockerel’s feather; he clutched his mother’s hand and frowned ferociously at the grass. Master William Osbert Ransome-Frome, ten, wore a sailor suit and a ribboned straw hat. Master Timothy Osbert Ransome-Frome, eight, wore stockings and kilt of the sickly Dress Stewart tartan, and full Highland trappings, and Rodney found time to wish that the Queen had never heard of Balmoral. Albert Bulstrode, nine, wore a blue Dutch boy’s costume; its high-crowned maroon velvet cap, with short peak and long tassel, clashed in anguish with his ginger hair and freckled face.

Joanna came at last and brought Robin down to the swings. She swished off again immediately, saying she had promised to play croquet with the Commissioner. The twins pounced on Robin and brought him dolls. True to his age, he left the dolls and became very busy about the task of moving every twig on the lawn six inches from where it had been before, talking to himself as he worked.

Rodney watched, absorbed; he’d give anything to know, to understand, what went on inside all those small heads. The place swarmed with children; one never appreciated how many there were in Bhowani until they all came together at a party like this. The voices of scolding mothers rose shriller and more often. The Club servants came out carrying trays loaded with glasses of boiled milk, cakes,
and mangoes. He saw by the groupings of the women that many men must already have slipped away to the bar.

Lady Isobel put her hand lightly on his sleeve. “Rodney, you go and enjoy yourself. I’ll keep an eye on Robin for a while.” He thanked her with a smile and worked his way over to the croquet pitch.

A mixed foursome—he thought he’d never seen one quite so mixed—moved slowly from hoop to hoop, tapping in succession at the coloured croquet balls. Joanna and Mr. Dellamain were playing against Mrs. Hatch and Swithin de Forrest. Dellamain played well, with only a small part of his attention on the game. The fingers of his left hand hovered always at the brim of his tall hat, ready to lift it an inch or two in gracious recognition of the salutations due to him. His glance flickered across Rodney’s face, and Rodney saluted. The grey hat rose, the full lips smiled, the eyes were sad and worried.

Joanna made a deft shot, and Rodney joined in the applause while she stood in a pretty attitude, resting both hands on the shaft of her mallet Mrs. Myers rolled by, making a heavy bow; Joanna contrived to smile at Mr. Dellamain and simultaneously to rake Mrs. Myers with an icy stare. Rodney glowered as he followed the players to the next hoop. If he had to take sides in the bedpan battle he would prefer to be in Mother Myers’ camp. Swithin de Forrest played an expressionless and fairly efficient game, speaking seldom and then only to give his partner, Mrs. Hatch, a word of cold advice. Rodney saw that Joanna was behaving as if Amelia Hatch had no part in this game, was not in Bhowani, did not exist; she was boiling with bewildered secret pique that Dellamain had invited a sergeant-major’s wife to play with them; she hadn’t learned yet even how to condescend graciously.

“Mrs. Hatch presents an unusual spectacle, does she not?”

That was Caroline Langford’s voice, strangely stilted, from just behind him. At a party ten days ago she had tried to talk to him about Kishanpur; but there was nothing
to say. He had known she wasn’t satisfied then, and here she was again. She’d bring up the old subject unless he could stop her. He said, “She does.”

He would not turn round; he would concentrate on Mrs. Hatch and the problem she represented. Each Native Regiment had, besides its British Officers, one British sergeant-major and one quartermaster-sergeant. They were the only Englishmen here not of commissioned rank and so, by definition, not of the upper classes. And of the six of them in Bhowani only Tom Hatch of the 88th had married a white woman; the rest kept Indian girls. Work kept Hatch busy, while Amelia had nothing to do but sip gin and fume over the wasteful incompetence of Indian servants. She’d never had servants before, and knew she could do the work better herself if she were allowed. She hated alike the loneliness of her bungalow and the condescension shown to her at such parties as this. She longed to gossip, and cut a fine figure, yet sometimes weeks passed without her talking to another Englishwoman. The gawky half-grown Hatch children were rolling their hoops apart from the rest even now, though Lady Isobel was trying to bring them into the games, and their clothes were as clean and smart as anyone’s.

Mrs. Hatch had spared no effort in her determination to dress up to the officers’ ladies. Her snub-nosed cockney face glowed brick-red above a maroon pelisse of frilled cashmere. Her crinoline dress was made of lilac satin and was monstrously skirted. A tiny poke bonnet of lilac satin, profusely decorated with artificial flowers, was held on the back of her head by a broad maroon ribbon tying under her chin. Wisps of hennaed hair, grey-brown at the roots, straggled over her ears and forehead, and under the bonnet half of her bun had worked loose. Large black buttoned boots thrust out from underneath her dress. Even where he stood Rodney caught the gin on her breath; that explained how she was managing to enjoy herself.