Ryman, Rebecca (54 page)

Olivia
had heard the stories before. Normally, she loved listening to anecdotes about
her mother's childhood and early life in England, but today, with frustration
and fear raging, she could scarcely keep still. Finally, almost cutting her
aunt off in mid sentence, she muttered some inane excuse and fled. Upstairs in
her room she sat down to compose a message. Her hand shook badly and it took
several attempts to make her handwriting legible and the message adequately
clear. It was more than likely, of course, that Jai already knew everything,
but she could not take that chance. Better to be teased later for needless
panic than to court a lifetime of regrets.

For
one silver rupee, the stable-boy assured her rapturously when she sought him
out at the water trough, that he would not only deliver her note to the boatman
of her choice, he would also sell her his soul if she so desired. She gave him
another rupee for the boatman, instructed him carefully, made him repeat all
her instructions twice and then, with a warning not to dawdle, sent him
packing. He grinned cheekily, leapt over the back wall with the nimbleness of a
squirrel and, without the
malis
having noticed, sped away into the dusk.
Olivia almost collapsed with a relief that could only be meagre, for the note
might well arrive too late to be of use. Still horribly agitated, she returned
to the verandah.

It
was almost dark. Lady Bridget was sitting quite still and in her hand she held
a letter. Olivia slipped back into her seat and observed idly that the
handwriting on the envelope that lay on the table face up was that of Estelle.
Her aunt had been expecting a note from her seeking permission to extend her
stay with the Pringles, of which Lady Bridget quite approved. Hunched tiredly
in her chair, Olivia leaned her head back against the wall and closed her eyes.
It was when she reopened them that she noticed something odd about her aunt's figure,
still in exactly the same position. Her hand, up in the air, held onto the
letter but she neither moved nor appeared to be reading it. In fact, her eyes
seemed to be fixed unblinkingly on some spot on the wall. When,
after a moment
or two, Olivia could perceive no movement in her aunt, she quickly rose and
bent over her.

"Aunt
Bridget?" Lightly, she touched her on a shoulder. "Are you feeling
all right?"

There
was no response. Indeed, Lady Bridget seemed unaware of her touch as well as
her presence. The face, mobile and happy only a short while ago, was white and
waxen; her cornflower blue eyes remained glassily riveted to the same spot and
showed no signs of life. She appeared to be not even breathing! Greatly
alarmed, Olivia shook her aunt by the shoulder. "Please say something,
Aunt Bridget, look at me! Is something wrong? Are you ill?"

She
still received no reply, but, with the shake of her shoulder, the letter fell
from her aunt's fingers and fluttered into a flowerbed below the verandah. The
hand that had held it remained in mid air, the fingers curved in the same
position as before. With a cry of fear Olivia leapt after the paper and
retrieved it. It was indeed a message from Estelle but hardly the note her aunt
had been expecting. Small, cramped writing filled every available space on both
sides of the foolscap sheet. What the main body of the letter had to say Olivia
had neither the time nor the need to pursue. The first two sentences said it
all.

Jai
Raventhorne had sailed on the
Ganga
with the afternoon tide. And her
cousin, Estelle Templewood, had sailed with him.

There
was much to be done.

In
a state of unconsciousness Lady Bridget was carried upstairs and put to bed
with hot-water bottles. The coachman was dispatched in a carriage to summon Dr.
Humphries. Rehman hurried off with a note to Sir Joshua at Barnabus Slocum's
headquarters in Lal Bazaar. Olivia had kept the message deliberately
unspecific:
Please return immediately. Aunt Bridget has taken ill.
It
was a mastery of understatement, considering the truth of the matter, strong
enough to fetch Sir Joshua yet adequately obtuse to avoid instant panic. There
would be enough of that in due course.

Issuing
brisk orders, conducting herself calmly and with competence, Olivia bustled about
with the mechanical efficiency of a puppet responding to the deft dictates of a
hidden string. Her mind was blank; only one corner of it, inexplicably, was
alive and crystal clear, setting her in a dreamscape outside of herself from
where she viewed the scene with detachment. It was this corner that warned her
of the need for action in many directions. She did not falter in her rapid
assessments, nor was it necessary for her to think. In any case, there was no
time for thought.

Mercifully.

The
first to answer her summons was Dr. Humphries. Bounding up the stairs with an
agility that belied his sixty-odd years and was the constant envy of his peers,
he huffed into the master bedroom and snapped open the black satchel that was
one of the most comforting sights in station. Taking out his pocket-watch he
examined Lady Bridget's pulse as her unconsciousness started to lift.

"Nothing
much wrong there," he said, opening each eyelid
in turn and
peering under it closely. "What appears to have caused her to faint? Some
kind of shock?"

Olivia
nodded. "She was reading a letter from her cousin in England. It contained
news of the death of a very old and dear friend." It was the first of many
plausible lies that she was to tell, more than even Olivia could have divined
at that particular moment.

"Sentimental
rot!" Dr. Humphries snorted. "We've all got to go sometime, but don't
worry," he patted her arm heartily, "it isn't your aunt's turn yet,
not by a long-shot. Bridget has the constitution of a dray-horse. She'll be back
in harness soon enough. Got any laudanum in stock?" Olivia nodded, went to
fetch it, then listened attentively to his instructions, which amounted to
nothing more than practical common sense. Finally, sipping with appreciation a
bowl of chicken broth she offered him in the downstairs parlour, he asked,
"And how are you, young lady? As good as new again, I trust? You look well
enough I must say."

"I
am. Thank you."

"Good,
but don't overdo things yet. We don't want a relapse, do we?" He whipped
out his pocket-watch again and clucked. "No peace for the wicked. Some
perverse woman has decided to have her baby two weeks ahead of schedule, no
doubt with the specific intention of ruining my billiards evening." He
gave a fog-horn of a laugh and it sounded so out of place that Olivia almost
winced. "Josh still at work?"

"Yes,
but he should be home shortly. I've sent him a message."

"Well,
tell him not to worry unduly about the mem. She'll outlive him yet, especially
if he doesn't stop hitting that bottle like a shippie in port, the silly
ass." Flying down the last few steps in the portico, he tossed his satchel
through the door of the carriage. "And where is my little monkey brat?
Titivating herself for the panto, no doubt, like the rest of her empty-headed
bunch?"

Few
European children who had passed through Calcutta during the past thirty years
had not been delivered by Dr. Humphries, and Estelle was a particular
favourite. "No, Estelle is not taking part in the pantomime. She is
spending the weekend with friends." The ease with which she could answer
his inquiry surprised Olivia, as did her instinctive cunning in withholding the
Pringles' name. There were not many Europeans with whom Dr. Humphries was not
personally acquainted.

After
seeing the kindly physician off, Olivia sat down to a hot cup of tea
thoughtfully provided by Rehman and considered the immediate future in
cold-blooded dispassion. More lies had to be devised to explain her aunt's
collapse; those that needed to be forged to account for Estelle's disappearance
from station would come later. In between, there would be Sir Joshua's imminent
nightmare to be considered. In her own mind there was no hint of a reaction; it
appeared that her capacity to feel had ceased to exist.

Sir
Joshua's mood, when he returned half an hour later, was partly of alarm but
mostly of extreme annoyance. "What the devil is wrong with Bridget? She
was perfectly healthy when I left the house. Has Humphries been here?" He
could barely contain his impatience.

"Yes.
He said to tell you not to worry. It's nothing serious. She's fast asleep at
the moment."

"Nothing
serious?" He went cold with anger and his voice rose. "In that case,
why was I summoned? Are you aware of the business your untimely message
interrupted?"

"Yes,
but the message was sent before Dr. Humphries arrived." His anger suddenly
seemed pathetic to Olivia. It was unlikely he had not heard of the departure of
the
Ganga
but obvious that he had no idea of the extra passenger she
carried. "In any case, it is not the matter of Aunt Bridget's illness that
is serious."

They
were standing outside the bedroom door as they talked. In the act of turning to
go down the stairs again, Sir Joshua stopped. There was no change in his
expression—arrogant, inflexible and incensed—but an eyebrow lifted in impatient
inquiry. He showed no sign of presentiment, no inkling of the whirring wings of
disaster. Olivia felt a stab of pity. Wordlessly, she handed him the envelope
containing Estelle's letter and slipped into her aunt's room.

The
hooves of the bay gelding were not heard again on the gravelled drive outside.
Sir Joshua Templewood was not to leave his house again that evening. Or for
many more evenings to come.

Drawing
the curtains against the night, Olivia sent the ayah off for her meal and
positioned herself on a stool to resume her vigil. Lady Bridget slept on,
protected for the moment by the blessed waters of Lethe, but for how long, how
long? A paraffin lamp burned low on the chest of drawers, and around it, bent
on apparent self-destruction, fluttered a large fawn-coloured moth
with
scarlet-tipped wings. Finally, as it deserved to for its fool-hardiness, it
dropped to the floor, twitched its shredded wings a few times and died. Olivia
watched it without compassion.

Jai
and Estelle . . .

The
night wore on. The majolica clock on the wall ticked away the leaden moments.
Sir Joshua did not come up the stairs again. On the bed, snoring slightly, Lady
Bridget slept on. The ayah, propped awkwardly against a wall, dozed fitfully.
Outside, the noises of the night came and went: the discordant chorus of
cicadas, the rustling symphonies of leaves, the intermittent calls of the
watchman on duty warning away intruders. The lamp, starved of paraffin,
spluttered and fizzled out, but Olivia didn't notice the added dark. Disjointed
fragments waltzed across her mind's eye carrying images and imaginings,
reveries and revocations that came and went at random. They left behind no
impression; it was as if she was watching the passing parades of quite another
life. Alien to her, they bounced off her deadened mind like raindrops off an
impervious surface. Only the stubborn beats of her heart, even and steady, told
her that she was still alive. All else was an unreality of shadows and silences
and the smell of impending death.

Jai
and
Estelle . . .?

Charitable
mists of sleep provided occasional oblivion, but when they dissipated they left
behind deeper unrealities, greater disorientation. Suspended upside down like a
bat, she hovered between dream-worlds that gave her no clue as to where she
was, who she was,
why
she was at all. And then, suddenly, night was
done. The slits between the curtains became slices of light; the chatter of
early birds in the garden revived. Perched on a ledge a crow cawed out his
lungs as if delivering a message of vital importance that simply could not
wait. Olivia rose, stretched her numb limbs and shooed him off, irritated by
his noisy persistence. Mouth agape, one arm flung over the side of the bed,
Lady Bridget breathed evenly in her sleep. The ayah, untidily heaped on a rush
mat outside on the landing, stirred, then went back to sleep. Olivia did not
waken her. Instead, she washed in cuttingly cold water, combed out her hair and
wove it into a plait, and went downstairs.

Another
dawn, another day. Another age. Everything was different and yet the same. Even
the thirst for morning tea.

Sir
Joshua was not in his study. Olivia found him in the back garden hunched over
on the wall, sitting and hugging his knees against the late autumn cold. She
set the tea-tray down beside
him, went inside to fetch his woollen cape and
draped it about his shoulders. He turned and her breath caught. During the
night, strands of his hair had streaked with grey. His eyes looked like pools
of stagnant water; they had sunk into his skull, creating black hollows of his
sockets. In the unearthly light his skin looked crackling dry, stretched taut
and yellowing over angular cheek-bones that Olivia could have sworn were not
visible yesterday. What seemed to have gone during the night was the substance
of the man, like a snake that sheds its skin, leaving behind an empty husk. Her
uncle had aged ten years in as many hours.

She
said nothing; there was nothing to say. Even "good morning" would
have been a travesty for them both. In silence, divided by their separate
thoughts, they sipped hot tea with funereal solemnity. Then Sir Joshua sighed,
and a spasm rippled through the frame of what was once a man. He said nothing,
but a tear trickled unnoticed down his face. Olivia gathered up the tea things
and walked back to the house, leaving him to his grief. They all, each one of
them, needed their own private space to lick their wounds in solitude. They
could all cry for themselves; who would cry for her?