Ryman, Rebecca (87 page)

"But
Raventhorne will die!" Her words echoed and reechoed in the hollow that
was her brain; her tongue was like lead in her mouth, each movement of it an
effort. With supreme courage she started to walk towards her uncle, to stop the
senseless slaughter from happening, to do something, anything! But before she
had even taken a step, Ransome had her arm in a vice grip.

"No,
Olivia!"
His whisper was uncommonly harsh. "One of them
must
be eliminated
today!
Leave them be."

Standing
next to Olivia, John Sturges shuddered and looked ill as he repeatedly rubbed
his eyes with the back of his hand. He muttered something to Ransome but
received no reply. Eyes riveted, face bloodless, Ransome only watched. And
waited.

"Two
. . ."

With
the lazy grace of a fawn taking its ease, Raventhorne raised a hand to brush a
slick of hair off his forehead. In his expression there was neither fear nor,
indeed, hostility. Only an oddly amused curiosity—and that enduring contempt.
Within the empty caverns of Olivia's mind arose a recurring refrain:
Jai Raventhorne
is going to die, Jai Raventhorne is going to die.
Did she care? she
wondered idly. She could not tell. From behind, someone took her hand and
pressed it as if in support. She turned to look and saw that it was Willie
Donaldson. He shook his grizzled grey head in a cautionary gesture, a tacit
reference to her abortive attempt at intervention. "You canna do aught,
lassie, not in your condition." She smiled without having heard anything.

"Three!"

In
the sepulchral silence, hushed as in a tomb, nothing moved; there was not a
breath, not a whisper. Then Raventhorne laughed. "What's the matter, Sir
Joshua? Running short of courage
again?"

The
cutting barb preceded by a minim three simultaneous happenings: Sir Joshua's
revolver blazed, Raventhorne sidestepped—in a lightning reflex—and behind his
shoulder an exquisite gilt-framed Belgian mirror of handsome dimensions
exploded in a firework display of tinkling glass. Extensive as it was, the room
reverberated with the shot as if it had been cannon fire. Women screamed, there
was pandemonium all around and the noise of human voices was ear shattering. No
one was certain as to what exactly had happened and in precisely what sequence.
In the babble there were hoarse oaths, incoherent expostulations and a few hysterical
giggles. Then, gradually, the smoke started to clear; the confusion spent
itself and receded. What emerged from both was the form of Jai Raventhorne
still standing erect and once more in the same place and the same derisive
posture as before the shot. The room froze. Once more everyone fell silent.
Could it be that the best of the evening's entertainment was still to come?

"Try
again, Sir Joshua!" Raventhorne's taunt was soft but incisive. In it now
was a ring of confidence. "Aim three inches lower this time. My heart
still beats."

There
was a ripple of disappointment around the room. Dammit, not a drop of blood
shed yet? What the deuce could Josh be thinking of! Slowly and very
deliberately, Sir Joshua's right hand rose again. As he took aim, his facial
muscles were taut with concentration, his dark brown eyes hooded into slits and
unmoving. Once more curled around the hairspring trigger, his index
finger was as
steady as the rock out of which his huge body seemed to be hewn. It seemed
impossible that he could miss again. In desperation, Olivia swivelled her head
to look imploringly at Arthur Ransome, her own limbs petrified into immobility,
her senses skittered. But Ransome neither felt her look nor returned it. He
stood as if in a trance, motionless, staring. The suspense of the moment was
excruciating. Eyes boggled, mouths gaped and foreheads dripped with sweat, but
not a hand rose to dab them dry. Everyone waited for that second shot with
which the life of Jai Raventhorne would be ended. To even blink might deny them
the thrill of a lifetime, the culmination of a strange vendetta such as they
had not seen before nor, probably, ever would again.

An
eternity passed. But Sir Joshua's second shot did not come. Time pulsed by in
tick-tock rhythm as a dozen clocks marked collective heartbeats. Patiently
everyone waited, breath bottled tightly, eyes still wide and unblinking. The
seconds passed, and then a minute—and still there was no second shot. Sir
Joshua's index finger hugging the trigger, caressing it, trembled once, and
then it trembled again. Nothing in his face changed, not even the fixedness of
the eyes boring into those of his intended victim. But slowly his firing arm
descended until it was once more hanging loose and vertical by his side. For a moment
longer the two men held each other's gaze, one challenging and derisive, the
other ungiving and unreadable. Swinging lazily, the Colt dangled from Sir
Joshua's forefinger, then with a soft plop fell onto the carpet. In the
electrifying silence it could have been a clangor. Sir Joshua did not pick it
up again. What he picked up instead was his greatcoat draped over Ransome's
arm, behind him.

Very
briefly, his expression casual and untroubled, Sir Joshua smiled, first at
Ransome, then at Olivia. He arranged the coat in careful folds over his own
arm, turned on his heel and started to walk out of the room. Despite the
universal puzzlement, no one stopped him; no one uttered a word in question or
comment. Parting, like the Red Sea before Moses, the crowd merely gaped, the
mystification unsaid. As when he had entered, Sir Joshua's steps were firm, his
towering figure stately and imperious. In no more than a quarter of a minute,
he had traversed the length of the room and passed through its doorway.

Puzzlement
became shock, and shock, indignation—and then all was bedlam. There were
incensed opinions being voiced everywhere, all at once. What the
devil
did
Josh think he was up
to, dash it ...? How dare he, an Englishman and a gentleman, lose his nerve in
the midst of his own challenge? Why, it was outrageous! Worse, in scandalous
poor taste, scandalous! The man had proved a disgrace to decent colonial
society, to say nothing of to his Club. The consensus having been arrived at
with her own shrill participation, the Spin decided to finally swoon.
Vociferous in their disappointment at having been short changed in their
expectations, everyone decided it was time to go home.

Only
Barnabus Slocum heaved a long-suffering sigh of private relief as he swabbed
the pouring perspiration from his face. Had that damn fool Josh actually killed
the half-caste bastard (as Slocum had secretly hoped), he, personally, would
have been in a pretty pickle as the station's chief law officer. It would have
been a clear case of murder. He would have had to go through the tedious
procedures of arresting and charging Josh publicly. Of course, subsequently a
case would be devised somehow or other for self-defence, but with so many
blasted witnesses it would have been sticky, to say the least—
damn
sticky!
Josh would have had to be given at least simple imprisonment for three years.
The native community would have howled, naturally, and there would have been
hot, embarrassing exchanges with London. Just as well the man had not only
missed the first time around but then also turned yellow. Slocum was damned if
he understood
how,
but then he wasn't about to probe further. As for
that bloody, trouble-making sod, Raventhorne . . .

Slocum
looked around, as everyone else appeared to be doing, with perplexity, but
there was no sign in the room of the man whose life had missed being
extinguished by a whisker. Sometime during the melee he too had slipped out,
leaving behind even more unanswered questions. Grudgingly, another consensus of
opinion was conceded. A dashed shame, of course, that Josh
had
unaccountably
misfired, but neither could it be gainsaid that Kala Kanta himself had
displayed exemplary courage. Not every man—not even a pure-blooded
Englishman!—could have flirted with death with quite such panache. And that too
unarmed and in confrontation with a crack marksman of proven mettle. It hurt to
admit it, naturally, but British fair play decreed that even the devil, when
deserving of it, be given his just due.

Suffocated
by the warmth of a pressing crowd, all talking at once in their expressions of
polite thanks and good nights, Olivia finally capitulated. Someone, perhaps
Willie Donaldson or the doctor, she could not tell which, steadied her with an
arm and then lowered her into a chair. In her hazy vision she saw Lubbock
approach, his
face alight with pleasure at having seen this dreary town redeem itself with
some
goddam action. His grinning lips moved but she did not hear a word. Mrs.
Sturges, John's mother, placed a handkerchief soaked in eau-de-Cologne on her
forehead; a familiar voice—Estelle's?—murmured soothing words and John
Sturges's strong hand vigorously fanned her face to produce cooling breezes.
Olivia closed her eyes in transient relief, but she knew that she was going to
faint. Before she actually did so a second later, a wild thought streaked
through her mind, almost reducing her to hysterical laughter.

Now
she had one more score to settle with Jai Raventhorne. Not content with having
ruined her life, he had also damn near ruined her party.

Whether
ruined or not, Olivia's extraordinarily suspenseful
burra khana
was the
talk of the station everywhere on the following day. Little else was considered
worthy of dissection at the Tolly's Sunday brunch, on the cricket pitches and
in private homes, both European and native. Nor was the matter likely to be
laid to rest through many more days and weeks to come. It was, everyone agreed
without reservation, the most conversationally productive event in the town
since 'Forty-five, when Charlie Bagshott-Brown had decamped with his wife's
jewellery, his employer's petty cash and his daughter's piano teacher, and
Prudence Bagshott-Brown had retaliated by inviting her friends to a public
bonfire of her husband's remaining possessions on the Maidan. That Olivia's
lavish dinner-party would have been even more conversationally fertile had Sir
Joshua not made such a spectacle of himself by turning his back on his
challenge was a matter of collective regret. But few denied that whatever the
quantum of unplanned entertainment generated, it had been worth every minute of
the evening.

Olivia
spent the morning in bed. Her physical and emotional stamina was exhausted. And
once more she was a victim of that convulsing nausea that was an inevitable
symptom of her condition. Honed into a habit, her selective memory resolutely
pushed aside for the time being the more devastating aspects of the evening:
Raventhorne's diabolical return, the crippling suspense, her uncle's
unforgivable melodramatics, Estelle's unspeakable duplicity in inviting both
Raventhorne and her father, and Sir Joshua's strange wilfulness in inviting
public scorn. Was she relieved that it had been so, that Raventhorne still
lived? Olivia chose not to think about that at all. What she filled her mind
and heart with instead was an overwhelming prayer of gratitude; Jai Raventhorne
had no
suspicions about Amos.
She and her son were safe!
And now with both
Raventhorne and her cousin out of her life forever as of today, the path was
clear for the return of her darling son from Kirtinagar.

For
the moment nothing else mattered.

At
tea time Arthur Ransome called, hunched with unhappiness, drawn and suddenly
aged, and sunk in mute depression. Making inquiries about her health and being
reassured by Olivia, he then relapsed into silence and sat sipping his tea with
no further attempt at conversation. What had happened last night was harrowing
enough; it was not easy for him to listen to the harsh mockeries and ridicule
now being heaped openly on a friend with whom he had shared almost all his
life. But what appeared to be weighting him down now went far beyond the reach
of mere public displeasure. Something pressed on his mind that could not be
explained by the debacle of last evening. Olivia's heart went out to Ransome,
but she had no words with which to solace him. Rather than insult him with
platitudes, she chose to merely sit, sharing his silence. In the face of his
loss of spirit, she even felt involuntary pangs of sympathy for her uncle. If
she had had to make self-destroying decisions in her life, so perhaps had Sir
Joshua. As ordained by circumstances, the blueprint of his life too was perhaps
as tragic in all its compulsions as that of the rest of them. Even as tragic
perhaps as the life of the man he had tried to destroy last night.

That
morning, early, a letter had been delivered to Olivia from John Sturges. He had
begged to be received, even briefly, one last time before their departure for
Cawnpore. Not unkindly, for she had nothing against Estelle's husband, whom she
liked without qualification, Olivia had used her fatigue and indisposition as
an excuse for her inability to receive any visitors. In a separate envelope,
there was also a letter from Estelle. That Olivia had returned unopened.

As
far as she was concerned, Estelle was dead. As dead as Estelle's own mother
still considered her, never to be accepted back into her life.