Ryman, Rebecca (60 page)

My
dear, darling Coz, my only friend—

There
are no words with which I can express my gratitude to you. It is you who showed
me the way to this wonderful, wonderful fulfilment, to the love of my life, my
only love. It was you who triggered my interest in the man you met once so
casually—and it was
you who taught me how to see him in a light so different from that in which
others saw him. Instead of contempt and hate, you unknowingly showed me how to
regard him with compassion—the one feeling he has always been denied by
everyone. Once we were not allowed to mention his name in our house; now his
name resounds in my heart with its every beat and it fills me with a joy that I
can never hope to put into words.

I
wanted
so much
to tell you everything, dearest Coz. I felt you were the
one person in the whole wide world who would truly understand what I felt.
Alas, you fell ill and I couldn't. Perhaps just as well! Knowing your high
ideals, your sense of duty, the honesty with which you conduct yourself
always—knowing all these I have no doubt you would have tried to dissuade me.
Would you have succeeded? Who can tell! Not because I love Jai less but because
your logic is so hideously persuasive.

I
write this from Chitpur, from one of Jai's quaint and quite amusing homes. In
an hour—sixty minutes!—he will send for me. I am to be summoned aboard the
Ganga
—remember
that beautiful clipper we admired one day from the Strand? How I would love you
to see it, my darling Coz! It is in this graceful machine that we are to
explore the seven seas, Jai has told me. Oh, I can scarcely wait! At last,
Olivia, the wide, wide world and its secrets are to be mine. No,
ours!

Whether
you believe this or not, the pain I have in my heart for my beloved Mama and
Papa is acute, the only cloud in an otherwise clear sky. I know that in your
immense wisdom, in the sympathy and love that you have for me, you will solace
them and at the same time assuage my own crime by pleading forgiveness for me.
You will be to them, I know, a far, far better daughter than I ever was. They
will need you— and you will fulfil that need just as you have always fulfilled
those of your own father. But in your anger with me, my darling Coz, promise me
that you will never, never stop loving your incorrigible brat of a cousin, for
my love for you is deep and abiding. I have told Jai so much about you, so
much! God willing, one
day you too will know him as I do and learn to love him as I have.

And
now I must fly. Jai's man waits at the gate with a carriage. The
Ganga
must
not miss the tide or Jai will be livid. Adieu, sweet Coz, adieu—but not
farewell. For everything you have given me and taught me, I am grateful,
forever in your debt. I will try to emulate your fineness always, for it
illuminates my life like a beacon guiding me to a destiny that will not be
diverted. If not now, as you read this, one day you will consider me worthy of
your love, but for the moment I remain your worthless, selfish cousin, Estelle.

There
was a postscript:

Did
you really believe it was
Clive Smithers
who had bewitched me? Ugh!

And
another:

When
you clear my room—as Mama will not want to wait to do!—please return
Charlotte's silver sandals to her. Also Polly's music sheets, which are in my
bureau. I can never forgive Papa for all the nasty things he said, nor Mama for
her instigations, but despite their little love for me I have preserved such
secrecy that you, especially, would be proud of your chatterbox cousin! I have
told no one of my plans, not even Charlotte. Mama will be content that she may
have lost a daughter but not her reputation. If there is a scandal, that, at
least, will not be of my doing. E.

With
the letter in her hand, Olivia sat motionless. Everything within her had come
to a standstill. She was in the eye of a cyclone; the world still swirled but
inside there was only eerie calm. Then she lay down on her bed and closed her
eyes. Behind the darkness of her lids, those visions kept locked in frozen
seclusion for so long slunk out one by one to parade in gleeful abandon.
Spectres lurking in crevices unknown scuttled out to mock with no further
constraints. The cyclone spun like a top; the
vortex that had given her brief
sanctuary moved on. Suddenly something struck with the force of a
sledge-hammer.

She
doubled over with pain.

All
night long the storm raged. Honed knives scythed her flesh, slashing and
shredding till it parted in ribbons. Memories, acid edged, cut into her mind,
spreading their poison so impartially that nothing was left uncontaminated. The
agony became fierce; to stop herself from giving it voice, Olivia stuffed
bedclothes in her mouth but in the knowledge that the agony would cease only
when her breath did. Her pain poured out spasm by spasm and yet more remained
to be excavated. The more she expunged, the more her body generated. Like an
open-ended cataract, her torment was eternal.

She
wanted to die.

But
death is no easy benefactor to be invoked lightly. In her body, her energies
remained tireless, marvellously resourceful in their infinite variety. She was
not to be allowed facile escape from the whispered echoes of love, the
melancholy beckoning of ashen eyes deceptively tipped with tears, the scoring
sensations of caresses given by the man who had known her but whom she had not
known at all. Bewilderment, bitterness, futile fury—like grinning ghouls they
lingered and waned and then waxed again reminding her of her helplessness. And
in the twisted conjurings of an imagination run wild, she saw hallucinations.
Estelle delightedly exploring the quaint house that amused her so; Estelle
clambering up the rope ladder to receive the hand of love from above; Estelle
with her flaxen curls spread across the fat bolsters and pillows of the
four-poster bed. And Estelle in that same embrace, incited into a passion that
would carry her too into triumphal womanhood . . .

Trust
me.

Forgive
me.

But
yes, I do love you ...

Lies,
lies, lies, all lies! The extent and finality of her betrayal were so gross, so
grotesque, that Olivia could not yet assimilate them.
Victim!
Enmeshed
in an unending skein of tangles, she could not unravel any conclusions. Which
one of them was the victim, she or Estelle? Or both? The longest night of her
life brought neither answers nor relief. And when the dawn finally pinked the
east, all it provided was the promise of another day in hell, and beyond it
another and another.

At
last she laid her head on the window-sill and wept. Who for? She could not
tell. All she knew from her tears was that her body lived even though nothing
else within her ever would again.

The
Danish Settlement at Serampore was a pretty, whitewashed town, which, from the
Templewoods' Barrackpore bungalow on the opposite bank of the Hooghly, appeared
even more European than Calcutta. It was from here that the Baptist Mission
published their quasi-religious periodical,
The Friend of India,
under
the inspired guidance of the celebrated Dr. Marshman, a liberal and widely
respected missionary. Barrackpore, which Olivia liked, was on the other hand a
military establishment, which accounted for its equally neat and orderly
appearance with its cool green forests, its lovely stretches of well-tended
park land and its air of quiet efficiency. They had journeyed up the river in a
convoy of boats laden with baggage and servants, between banks ablaze with red,
white and purple balsam, bright blue convolvulus, white datura bells and myriad
creepers that festooned thick fences of aloe. Coconut and date palms, thickets
of bamboo, and fernlike grasses stood tall against the clear periwinkle skies
washed with winter sunshine.

The
five weeks since Estelle's flight had dulled the cutting edges of pain but had
brought little other comfort. They each still remained steeped in their
separate silences nursing separate wounds with whatever pitifully inadequate
therapies they could devise for themselves. The once-compelling merchant prince
remained a vacant-eyed husk, his mind closed to reality, a seeming stranger to
the body he inhabited without awareness; Lady Bridget had plunged herself into
religion, her twitching hands forever clasped around a Bible from which her
glazed eyes seemed not to read a word. Olivia courted fatigue as her only
salvation, her own despair buried under pretences of frantic activity. Like
one's travelling possessions, what is locked inside the
heart must also
be transported when seeking escape through a change of scenery.

The
single decision that sustained Olivia now was that as soon as she could, she
would return to her father in Hawaii.

"I
wish Bridget and Josh would join us in our evening strolls," Arthur
Ransome said one day when they had been in Barrackpore a week. "An
occasional outing might help divert their grief."

They
were walking around the parade ground watching the energetic manoeuvres of a
group of soldiers. To one side of the ground stood high-roofed stalls in which
some sturdy elephants were being fed on leaves and branches while the sepoys
went through their daily drill with meticulous precision. "People tend to
be jealously possessive of their grief," Olivia replied. Estelle's little
spaniel, as abandoned as they, whined and tugged at the leash she held, so she
bent down and released it. "And like everything else, grief has to be
lived through before time heals it, whether one wants to be healed or not.
Sooner or later, they will come to terms with their loss." How brittle she
sounded, how pedantic! Would she ever come to terms with her loss?

"I
daresay they will," Ransome agreed. "But what pains me most is their
seeming loss of each other."

What
he said was true. Tragedies usually served to draw families together. Estelle's
desertion, however, appeared to be forcing the Templewoods apart with a
vengeance. Between them now hovered constantly simmering resentments, unspoken
accusations, a waste land of dead considerations and an aversion to each
other's company. They rarely spoke, each confined to spaces that were mutually
exclusive. It was tragic, yes, but for Olivia it was also worrisome for other
reasons. In their growing distance from each other, it was to her that they
both now turned for emotional strength.
How
could she leave them now
when they both needed her so desperately?

It
was the last week of December. Christmas Day came and went, barely noticed. A
luncheon invitation from the Baptist Mission was declined, as was one from the
army commandant. It was left to Babulal to commemorate the occasion with a
roasted guinea fowl and some hot mince pies baked with marvellous ingenuity in
a makeshift oven. There were no gifts exchanged, no carols sung, no tree
adorned, no indications at all of the
burra din,
big day, being
celebrated elsewhere by enthusiastic Christian groups. Despite Lady Bridget's
newly generated religious fervour,
she recoiled at the idea of attending a
local service where others would be present. Nobody even thought to make the
suggestion to Sir Joshua.

If
the prospect of merry-making on Christmas Day was preposterous, New Year's Day
was not remembered at all until the following morning. A messenger arrived from
Calcutta bearing greetings from Freddie Birkhurst and his mother, reminding
them that sometime during their nightmares 1848 had quietly slipped away and a
new year arrived. In a separate letter to Olivia, Freddie mourned her absence
from station and begged to be allowed to call on her the very instant she
returned to town.

Freddie!
In the past weeks, Olivia had barely thought of him! But now, of course, she
would have to. He would have to be given his answer soon. There was no
ambiguity about Olivia's answer, but the prospect of comforting him with
pointless platitudes, of listening to his stricken bleatings and perhaps
prolonged persuasions, was unbearable. She had intended to request Arthur Ransome
to book a passage for her as soon as they returned to Calcutta. Faced with
Freddie's ardent letter, she decided to broach the subject to Ransome
immediately. To soften her request, she compiled a litany of excuses—her
father's asthma was flaring up again, he had written for urgent help with a new
book, he had bought land in Hawaii and to toil on it alone would be an
intolerable strain . . . Feeding this kind, sincere friend with yet another
tissue of lies made Olivia feel soiled and ashamed. But despair had dulled the
edges of her conscience, and a fresh storm, more relentless than any other she
had known, was about to break over her head. Already the swiftly advancing
gusts of panic threatened to blow her away.

"Of
course, my dear." Struggling manfully to conceal his disappointment,
Ransome accepted her prevarications without question. "It is unforgivably
selfish of us to want to keep you here for our own ends when you are so vitally
needed elsewhere. Certainly I will do the necessary as soon as we are back in
station. You can depend on me." Visibly saddened, he said no more about
the matter but turned quickly to another. He started to talk to her about his
visit to Kirtinagar.