Ryman, Rebecca (117 page)

In
the tedious task of compiling the few remaining inventories at the mansion,
Olivia gratefully accepted Arthur Ransome's offer to help. Also, the matter of
the Birkhurst jewellery given to her at the time of her marriage could no
longer be postponed. With her sailing date approaching rapidly, some decision
had to be arrived at and Olivia badly wanted advice. After completing the
copious compilations in the kitchen, the provision store-rooms, the stables and
the gardeners' sheds, over breakfast Olivia asked Ransome, "Since I do not
intend to take the jewellery with me, would it be wise to leave it in the bank
vault in Mr. Pennworthy's care? If I do so Donaldson will want to know why I do
not take it with me."

Ransome
reacted more sharply than Olivia had expected. "Those jewels are
yours," he said with categorical conviction. "They
are
yours
to take with you legitimately wherever you go. Whatever your differences might
be with Freddie, you are still his
wife and the baroness. To say nothing
of being mother to his two sons."

Perhaps
because she was out of kilter, or because of her prevailing emotional
imbalances, or maybe because she was suddenly tired of all her deceptions,
Olivia decided to now tell Arthur Ransome the entire truth. There had been no
end to her lies; she was beginning to be disgusted with them, especially with
the tawdry half truths she had been dispensing to this fine man who had given
her his sorely needed friendship and love and thus deserved much better. The
breakfast completed, Olivia folded her serviette and asked composedly,
"Have you ever wondered, Uncle Arthur, why you have never seen Amos
closely since the christening even though he is your godchild?"

He
frowned, not knowing what to make of the sudden question. "Amos? Well, no.
That is to say," he shifted uneasily in his seat and coloured, "yes.
As a matter of fact, I have wondered sometimes ..."

Olivia
rose from the table. "You will see him now. Then I will not have to
explain the reason." She went out of the room to summon Sheba.

Ransome
had not added that the wonderment was, in fact, universal. But then, he was
certain that in her perspicacity she was already aware of that. There had been
much unkind gossip concerning the reclusivity in which she was bringing up her
child. Ransome had never mentioned any of it to Olivia, but he had been hurt by
much of what he had heard at
burra khanas
and had, on occasion, defended
her stoutly. Not being dense, he had calculated that Amos had enacted in this
shadow play—all the nuances of which he could not understand—a quite
considerable part far in excess of what was apparent.

A
few minutes later, Olivia returned with the child. Now all of fifteen months
old, Amos was just starting to find his feet and insisted on making full use of
his discovery. He toddled in unsteadily, hanging on to his mother's finger,
stumbled once or twice, then sat down heavily with a thud in the middle of the
carpet. Leaving him where he was, Olivia walked back to the table and resumed
her seat opposite Ransome. Left to his own devices, Amos looked around for a
plaything and happily grabbed a cushion to investigate with consuming interest.

Olivia
watched Ransome's face carefully, not removing her eyes from it as he sat
staring at the child. "Well?"

His
stare deepened and his frown intensified. Initially puzzled,
his expression
slowly changed into something else. Realisation came in stages, then all at
once everything clicked into place in his mind and he gasped. "God's
blood!" he whispered, aghast. "Am I seeing things, Olivia? Do my eyes
deceive me . . .?"

"No.
Your eyes do not deceive you. The person Amos reminds you of so unmistakably is
indeed his father. Are any further explanations necessary?"

He
shook his head, his face bleached white. For a moment he could not speak.

A
corner of the cushion was now in Amos's mouth and imminent destruction was
threatened with his teeth. Olivia got up to give the bell rope a tug and then
gently removed the object from the child's hands. Incensed at the deprivation,
Amos opened his mouth and screamed. But before he could exert his lung power to
its full capacity, which was considerable, Sheba had quietly come in, whisked
him up in her arms and removed him quickly from the room. The child's lusty
bawls continued until the door of the nursery upstairs slammed shut behind
them.

"You
see?" Olivia commented drily. "The resemblance isn't only skin
deep."

The
little interlude had allowed Ransome to recollect his scattered wits and
contain his reactions, but shock was still writ large across his face.
"All these months, all these
years,
how dreadfully you must have
suffered!" Disoriented and dazed, he dabbed his forehead with quick, clumsy
gestures. "And how severe must have been the strain of sustaining your
necessary subterfuges! I ... I scarcely know what to say . . ."

No
moral judgements, no pious censure; Olivia was moved to tears by his
unqualified acceptance and simple, spontaneous sympathy. "I married
Freddie because I had to marry someone," she said huskily, "and only
Freddie was decent—and foolish!— enough to have taken me. Freddie too has
suffered, also strained sometimes beyond endurance to sustain
my
subterfuges.
Now you see why I had to part with Alistair? And why I consider I have no right
to keep the jewellery?"

Enormously
saddened, he hung down his head and shook it. "I have had some intuitions
about your inner disturbances, my dear. And of course I sensed that you were
better . . . acquainted with Jai than you would have had me believe. But
this
was not a prospect I had ever imagined. What agonies you must have been
through!" Even baffled and unhappy, he had no difficulty making further
deductions. "I presume Jai was not aware of his
child's
existence when he indulged in that inexcusable act of abduction?"

"No.
But he is aware of it now."

Ransome
pondered. "Do you think that is why he returned him, having vowed not to
in that note?"

"I
have no idea," she said coldly. "The workings of his mind are as much
a mystery to me as they are to everyone else."

He
almost smiled; the workings of Jai Raventhorne's mind she knew as she did her
own, but he did not venture to pursue the thought. "But surely he has made
contact with you since then? Come forward with offers of, well, help . .
.?"

At
that Olivia stiffened. "His help is not required! Amos is my
responsibility. And he will remain a Birkhurst."

"Yes,
yes, of course. I only meant ..." Embarrassed, he lapsed into silence and
did not complete his sentence. When he spoke again it was with a tangential
switch of subject. "Wild rumours still thrive. One is that Moitra is about
to make a bid for Templewood and Ransome, whatever little remains of it."

"I
see." Her fractional smile was sarcastic. "Since he has not been able
to put you on the streets, for his efforts he buys the pleasure of at least
removing your name plate—is that it?"

Ransome
spread his hands to show his indifference. "Perhaps. I am inclined to let
him have that pleasure." Shaking two pills out of the bottle he always
carried, he washed them down with a draught of water, suddenly seeming as
detached as she. "I feel I too have had enough of India, you know, my
dear," he said unexpectedly. "There comes a time when she wants to devour
you for all that she has given. She breaks you in body and in spirit. She
cannibalises and destroys—as she did Josh and Bridget and, perhaps, even you.
All at once I find myself hungering for the placid green pastures of England,
where I can graze my last few years away in peace without fear of predators.
All at once, Olivia, I too want to go
home ..."

Olivia
searched his worn face in surprise and sadness. She had never before heard him
talk of England as his home. "Where will you go in England? Do you have in
mind any special place for retirement?"

"Home!"
He laughed sourly. "The tragedy is that it is of a foreign country that I
speak of as 'home.' I have a sister in Exeter, but I have not seen her since
she was ten. Now she is a grandmother. I doubt if we would even recognise each
other anymore. And all my friends are here. My only identity with England is
that on the
streets I will look no different from anyone else." He heaved a mighty
sigh, then clucked, as if in impatience with himself. "Oh . . .
bal
derdash!
It is old age that is making me nostalgic. My home, such as it is, is
here.
I
have no other. When I die, I would want to be buried in Indian soil next to
Josh."

Salim
came in bearing a tray of hot tea and Olivia silently set about refreshing their
cups. She could think of nothing to say that would not sound false and shallow,
but within herself she shared his loneliness. In his own way, he too was a man
of two worlds and yet of neither, as were so many other Englishmen estranged
from the mother country.

"You
must not take my ramblings seriously," Ransome said, shedding his air of
dejection and forcing a laugh. "I could never live in England any more
than Josh could have done. For one, we both hated those damned umbrellas one is
forced to carry everywhere, to say nothing of the diabolical winters and stewed
slop they call food. Besides, whatever would I do without my bearer? Good God,
I don't even know how to find a pair of socks for myself!" They laughed a
little, sipped their cups of steaming tea and lapsed again into trivia to shake
off their absurd melancholy. And then, as he rose to go, Ransome suddenly said,
"Oh, the wildest rumour of all I have not mentioned to you. Perhaps it
will help to cheer you up and dispel the involuntary gloom I have introduced
into the morning. Although some say that Jai has gone to earth in Assam in his
self-imposed banishment from station, others disagree. It is being bandied
about with gathering conviction that Kala Kanta is, perhaps, dead. Now, is that
not something to warm the cockles of many hearts, perhaps even yours?"

Was
he?

The
question remained trapped between the layers of Olivia's mind, scavenging its
tissue, interfering with all her thoughts. She could not understand its
persistence; she was becoming a stranger to herself. To correct the tilt of her
world and to retrieve a fine edge of her sanity, she rode fiercely every
morning. Her sorties took her far out into the countryside, along the river, to
the forests on the other bank of the Hooghly, but despite its exploding seas of
humanity, Calcutta to her was a city peopled with ghosts. Everywhere she saw
phantoms: in the mango groves, amidst scraggy scrub lands, around the bazaars
and the temples and the embankments, most of all along the river embankments.
The
Ganga
was again in port, moored at the Trident wharf, which was
shrouded in silence. Olivia started to shrink from those re-enactments she had
so blithely believed to be the means of her eventual liberation, her salvation
from the past. Instead of exorcising her, they were beginning to draw blood
again. Ironically, this time her adversary was invincible because it was
herself. And yes, her life was unfinished, like a stitched garment with the
hems left undone. All other parts of her life had now been neatened; she could
not leave those hems unattended.

"Is
he dead?"

It
was during her final visit to Kirtinagar that Olivia asked Kinjal the question
that would not lie dormant. She had brought Amos and Sheba with her for
farewells to a family that was now her own. If Kinjal was at all surprised by
her question, she took care to conceal it. Instead, she countered with one of
her own. "Would it matter to you if he were?"

"No.
It is merely a loose end. It needs to be tied."

"And
if Jai is dead, will you consider it then tied?"

"Yes.
Instantly."

"And
if he is not?"

"Then
it will take longer."

"Very
well then," Kinjal retorted, matching her obstinacy, "since it is of
no consequence one way or the other, we will talk about it later."

If
there was joy in the reunion, inevitably there were also ripples of consuming
sorrow. To soothe the melancholy aches of the long, perhaps permanent, parting
ahead, they exchanged wild promises, made enthusiastic plans, shared impossible
dreams.

"It
has always been my ambition to visit the New World," Arvind Singh said.
"Now there is even more incentive to do so. We will bring the children, of
course. They would never forgive us if we left them behind."

"Neither
would we! But you are used to living in palaces," Olivia teased.
"Would you be able to live with us in a grass hut when you come to
Hawaii?"

"Certainly.
My villagers live in huts made of mud and grass. I have often spent nights with
some hospitable family or other."

"Do
you still intend to start your little school?" Kinjal asked Olivia.

"Oh
yes. I will teach all our children together. And when they are not having
lessons we will swim and surf and teach them how to catch fish. Sally will keep
our appetites satisfied with taro doughnuts, which are now her specialty, she writes.
We will have luaus and sing Hawaiian songs and gather seashells to make
necklaces . . ."