Ryman, Rebecca (119 page)

It
was no effort to recognise the significance of the nightmare. It was a reminder
of what had to be done and had not been. It was also a reminder of Kinjal's
damnably accurate contention;
no, she had not paid all her debts. One remained.
Jai Raventhorne had indeed returned her son when he need not have. For that, at
least, she would always have to owe him.

Two
polished brass carriage lamps burned low on either side of the mahogany front
door. The brass knocker, also burnished, was in the shape of a tiger's claw. In
its ridged surface Olivia could see her face and it looked distorted, as in a
trick fairground mirror. Her hand rose and then dropped again. She shivered and
closed her eyes. Silently, she hunted for some helpful prop, some added
strength to perform her final mission in Calcutta. She would again be crossing
over an uncharted sea, but this, her most feared crossing yet, she knew that
she could not, must not, evade. Somehow she had to navigate this last course,
somehow. Taking courage from a long, deep breath, she raised her hand again.
This time it did not falter.

Before
the echoes of her knock had died away, the door slid open on oiled hinges and
Bahadur stood before her. Trained never to betray surprise, he only dared to
widen his eyes for a barely perceptible fraction of a second. Then, as usual,
he bowed low and folded his hands in greeting. Wildly, Olivia prayed that Jai
Raventhorne would not be home, that he had left instructions to deny her entry,
that he had already sailed away on his
Ganga.
But before she could nerve
herself to ask the question, Bahadur had already given her the unwanted answer.

"The
Sarkar is by the river with the dogs."

He
opened the door wide but Olivia shook her head and stepped back. She indicated
that she would prefer to reach the embankment through the garden path and would
easily be able to find her own way there. She walked down the path slowly,
preparing herself for the ordeal ahead. Above her, as she strolled, tall
casuarina and
neem
trees danced in random rhythm. The hand of the moon
was on her neck and it felt pleasantly cool on her burning skin. In her
nostrils the dankness of the Hooghly was strong and, like all smells, it immediately
evoked associated remembrances. Olivia recognised some of the constellations
overhead, the clusters of low hanging stars, even the wisps of cloud—all
familiar faces in the sudden crowd of memories. Time unwound. It was these very
configurations that had ordained her escape from the
burra khana
that
long-ago night. Escape! Had she
actually ever seen it as that? Around her it was
dark, but that flawless inner vision of hers—that traitor!—was like crystal,
clear in its image after image of a night that belonged to a previous
incarnation.

On
the embankment she neither saw nor heard the dogs. Perhaps he had already gone
away somewhere by another route? But in that hope too she was disappointed. She
saw the white blur of his shirt exactly where prescience had informed her it
would be—on those steps by the river. Olivia's breath quickened even as her
feet halted. Greedy swallows of air revived her lungs, dispelled her panic and
reconstituted her intentions. She had come tonight only to repay a debt, no more,
no less. Noiselessly, she slipped behind a bush to give herself time to
regularise the erratic gasps of her breath. He lay sprawled across the length
of the step, head cushioned on cupped palms, fingers clasped. He stared
intently at something, perhaps the opposite bank or the horizon or the silver
fringe of a rising moon—it was difficult to tell. Olivia stood and observed
him, the moments pulsing by in units of eternity. They were separated by only a
few steps, but even those were like symbols of infinity. Sheltered by the bush,
Olivia struggled to mentally formulate what it was that she had come to say,
but then, all at once, it was he who spoke first.

"You
should have told me."

Slowly,
he sat up but he did not turn to look behind him because, like a jungle animal,
he had perhaps caught her scent on the wind. Or maybe because he had never
needed eyes to see her. Or because she was expected. He had known that she
would come tonight.

She
negotiated the flight of steps to walk into his range of vision, her breath
once more even in its cadence. "I could not. I feared that you would want
to take him away from me."

He
still did not look at her. "Oh yes, you feared rightly!"

Olivia
sank down on the step above him, his face well within her sight so that she
could examine his expressions. "You could have kept him."

"Yes."

"Why
didn't you?"

"Why
is
still your favourite question!"

"Then
humour it." She was shocked at how ill and wan he looked.

"My
motives are immaterial. You have your son. Be content in that."

No,
she could not be content. Not until she had forced him
to verbalise a
renunciation as final as that with which he had once sought to disclaim her.
"Did you not want to?"

At
that he laughed, an empty little sound. "You wish to vindicate your
conscience at the expense of mine—is that it? You still want to have your cake
and eat it!"

"My
conscience needs no vindication," she retorted sharply. "You returned
to me what is rightfully mine!"

"True.
Nevertheless I will vindicate it." He swung his legs to position himself
at the far end of the steps that divided them. "No, I did not want to keep
him. Not even I, in all my reprehensibilities, could condone wilfully depriving
a child forever of his mother."

He
spoke with immense bitterness, and in his lie Olivia felt stirrings of the pain
that had recently also been her own. She did not wound him further by
challenging his lie. "In that case I misjudged you. I owe you an apology.
And some expression of gratitude."

"Is
that why you have come? To apologise, to offer thanks?"

Was
it? "Yes. It was an undeserved misjudgement. I did not think I would see
my son again. It was what you had threatened."

The
swift intake of his breath was harsh. "You owe me nothing. Your
misjudgement is not undeserved, neither is your mistrust. In my arrogance, I
expected far too much." As he turned finally, the moon touched his face;
it was gaunt, hollow cheeked. "I never thought to consider why you had
married Freddie," he mused wonder-struck. "I never even
thought
to
consider that!"

Olivia
wanted to get up and walk away, but she could not; there was more to be said.
She was trapped by her own intentions. In this final encounter with which she
completed her odyssey, she could not leave her pieces unspoken. She gritted her
teeth and stayed where she was. The silence was shattered by the barks of the
returning dogs. Accepting her as a familiar presence, they came bounding down
the steps but with no aggressive overtures. Animals too have memories, after
all, which endure well.

"Don't
move. They will not harm you." He uttered the warning mechanically, then
recalled that once before he had sounded the same caution in the same place,
and again he soured. "How different our histories might have been had I
walked the dogs in the opposite direction that night!"

"They
would have been no different. Fate is spiteful enough to have ensured that we
would meet in another time, another place."

He
stilled with the force of her cynicism. Already dull, like burnt-out ashes, his
eyes dimmed with aches that were involuntarily shared. His tongue too seemed to
taste the acrid flavours on hers, his vision also bedevilled by those same
phantoms that floated in hers. "Yes, your spiteful fate more than
mine!" He was ravaged, the despair also shared. "You were cursed to
meet me anyway."

Olivia
froze. She was done with the brittle bones of history, done with autopsies on
corpses already putrid with decay, done with weighing blame and counter-blame.
Fighting for balance, she centred her world with a single touch. But then she
immediately sent it awry again with the one subject she had vowed not to
invoke. "Why did you have to send me that long-lost letter? It was an act
of cruelty."

He
shuddered and closed his eyes. "Why do you still have to ask all these
questions?" He was too spent for anger. He sounded only beaten.
"Because you sail tomorrow and must neatly knot all those unfinished ends
your tidy mind has always hated?"

"If
you wish."

"Unfinished
ends!" He laughed a little, not replying to her question. "Yes, I
suppose that is all they can ever be now. You, my own cursed life, my
son..." Without completing the thought, he rose abruptly to pick up a
stone and send it spinning across the water in a fierce spurt of energy.

My
son.
Olivia
went cold.
My
son! For the first time it struck her that if they shared
nothing else ever, that pronoun of possession would forever be common property.
Angrily she shook off her numbness to steel herself and return to what was
relevant. "On your side, the bargain is fulfilled. On mine, it still pends.
The Templewood house is yours to take whenever you wish. The quarters remain
intact."

He
resumed his seat heavily, lilac shadows obscuring his face. "I have now
even less need of possessions."

"Nevertheless
I return to you what is yours as a . . . birthright." She stopped,
swallowed hard and continued. "As is this, which I also return to
you." Hands shaking, sick with shame, she placed the red velvet bundle as
close to him as she could reach. Initially she had intended to have it sent
back to him by messenger after her departure but had then willed herself the
courage to do so personally. There, now it was over, this most hideous of all
her missions! Now there remained nothing between them, except
for that
obnoxious pronoun that not even the gods could alter. Somehow she gathered more
courage to say what else needed verbalising. "I'm . . . sorry."

He
turned on her, all at once enraged. "You are generous in your remorse, but
I deserve no such consideration. In war one uses whatever weapon comes to
hand—a lesson you no doubt learned from
me.
I beg you, don't humble me
anymore!"

"I
did not come with the intention of humbling you."

"No.
You came only to tie all your loose ends. Are there more?"

"One,
perhaps." Her throat felt bruised with the effort of speech. "After
tonight we will not meet again. I would not want to part on a note of that
hostility, which is now obsolete. I have no more recriminations." One of
the slumbering beasts within her stirred, yawned and then scratched—would she
want to part at all ...? Ruthlessly, she crushed it out of her mind, but in her
agitation she stretched a hand towards the black bitch lying near her feet.

"Don't,
she is capricious!" Leaning sideways, he had stayed her hand with
lightning swiftness. The unplanned contact was like a plunge into icy waters;
it jolted both equally. Instantly, he let her hand drop. "No. We will not
meet again." In his ready agreement he was callous. "But such nobly
granted absolution is hardly the point! Loose end or not, I have a responsibility
towards the boy—"

"I
want nothing from you!" She sliced him off at once. "I accepted
nothing from my husband, save his name. From you not even that is due. My son
is my responsibility, mine alone."
My
son. She made no mistake with
her own emphasis.

He
winced, then threw up his hands in a gesture of abjuration. "I use words
badly, you know that. I don't know how to say what I mean with delicacy. I am
out of my depth, in a situation that has defeated me. I don't know how not to
be offensive."

In
his unaccustomed bewilderment he looked vulnerable, like a young bird that has
lost its bearings, but Olivia did not weaken. "It is a situation that need
not concern you. If it is outside your depth, it is also outside your life. I
will manage well on my own."

The
reminder of her essential aloneness slammed into him like a sledge-hammer,
although that was not what Olivia had intended. He convulsed. With a groan, he
covered his face with his hands. "Yes. I know you will manage well, but
how will
I?
It is not you I seek to help, Olivia, nor can I, but my own
misbegotten
self. You see? As always I am selfish and coarse and conceited, with none of
those social graces I once paraded before you with such pride. You must bear
with me, Olivia, one last time for the sake of . . ." He stopped and
looked up. "What is the name of the . . . boy? The ayah knew him only as
'baba.'"