Ryman, Rebecca (91 page)

She
had no more resources left.

Within
Olivia's grasp now lay no more devices with which to divert the flow of a
fortune so single-mindedly malignant in its intent. Exploiting her weakened
condition were other searing anxieties. Raventhorne suspected nothing yet, but
for how long? Olivia cursed the waywardness of her body that had again made her
a prisoner constantly awaiting the call of a hangman, forgetting what gifts
that body had given.

To
secrete Amos once more in Kirtinagar was impossible; Raventhorne was a frequent
visitor to the palace. No matter how total her faith in Kinjal and Arvind
Singh, royal courts were rife with intrigue, with invisible spies. And servants
talked. To rent a house in some distant mofussil and remain there with Amos
until her baby was born and then swiftly leave for Hawaii was to invite even more
attention. Why, pendulating tongues would ask, should Lady Birkhurst choose to
have
both
her children away from station? It was not the gossip that
deterred Olivia; it was the shrewd interpretations Raventhorne would put on it.
Amos could, of course, be dispatched to Hawaii in advance with Mary Ling,
but that option
Olivia could not bear to consider seriously. To be deprived now, at this lowest
of low ebbs, of her only emotional support would be an intolerable act of
self-cruelty. She needed Amos for her survival, to be able to face whatever
else was yet to come. The thought of Cawnpore flashed through her mind too and
then lingered. Olivia recognised that this was, perhaps, also Estelle's lowest
ebb, her most crying hour of need. The loss of her father would have brought
crushing anguish— and, unavoidably, it would have also brought lashings of
renewed guilt. To try to resolve now who had started what, when and where was
futile; but the toxic little seed that Estelle had helped to sow, from which
had sprouted so much of their collective present misery, would now inevitably
infuse even more poison in her unfortunate cousin's mind. Nevertheless, however
much she might want to provide solace to Estelle, Olivia had of necessity to
abandon any such project. Dr. Humphries would never allow her to travel by
coach on rough roads in her present condition. And, for the moment, nothing was
as vital in her life as the precious "mango seed" that had arrived in
her womb with so little warning.

That
Jai Raventhorne might be delayed in his return from Assam and that she would
have time to escape after all, Olivia did not even consider. With the
configurations of her stars so relentlessly inimical, not even by divine
oversight could such a miracle be possible.

Sunk
as he still was in his own morass of dejection, Arthur Ransome—again a daily
visitor—was even more depressed by her all-pervasive air of hopelessness. He
disapproved of the reclusivity on which Olivia insisted. Many kind sympathisers
called and left their cards—especially now since the news of Sir Joshua's
ghastly death "in the jaws of a man-eating tiger near Burdwan" had
shocked the city out of its wits—but Olivia would see only Ransome, the
Donaldsons and Dr. Humphries. As he was in the habit of doing lately, Ransome
came armed with the station's newspapers, both English and vernacular, in which
glowing tributes were being paid every day to an erstwhile merchant prince who,
despite his recent reverses, had left an indelible mark on the corporate life
of the city. There were, of course, many veiled and hostile references to
Raventhorne, but none at all to that memorable evening that had started the
process of Sir Joshua's demise long before he placed the revolver barrel in his
mouth. By dying, it seemed, Sir Joshua had earned the station's forgiveness for
an act at first believed to be cowardice but now
talked of as one of honourable
mercy toward an unarmed opponent. The papers were full of the early history of
Templewood and Ransome, spiced liberally with anecdotes of their Canton days.
Clinging to his nostalgia, Ransome relived their lives vicariously through the
newspaper articles, reading them aloud to Olivia, enjoying again the company of
a friend forever lost. And as a last act of loyalty he had concealed the true cause
of death in the obituary.

One
day, emotionally drained by his second-hand existence through written words—and
perhaps prompted by the good doctor—Ransome hesitantly suggested that Olivia
send for Estelle from Cawnpore. "You must forgive her now, Olivia; the
poor child has lost both her parents," he said heavily, unaware of what
had passed between them already. "Just as there are comedies of error, we
must now think of our mishaps as tragedies of circumstances even now not
totally irredeemable. Whatever is left to end will perhaps still end well for
us." He shuddered with the force of a sigh. "Those of us who remain,
that is."

Olivia
looked away. How was he to know, this most gentle, most sincere of all the
dramatis personae in those "tragedies of circumstances even now not
totally irredeemable," just how far it still was for her from ending?
Laden with her own sorrows, she did not reply to his suggestion. She knew,
however, in her unfailing self-honesty that she had been harsh with her cousin,
unduly so. Whatever Estelle's delusions about Raventhorne, in Olivia's mind now
there was no doubt that her cousin had told her the truth. But for the moment,
she decided, she didn't want to talk about it. Instead, she stirred a new
topic. "I've been meaning to ask you for some time, Uncle Arthur, about
the sale of your house. Have you had any luck yet?"

Ransome
made a wry face. "With Raventhorne back? There will be no luck with any
buyers, my dear. He will see to that."

She
couldn't believe what she had heard! "Even
now?
Even after Uncle
Josh is dead and buried . . .?" She was incredulous.

"But
I'm
not."

"He
can have nothing against you!" Olivia said warmly, her indignation so
sharp that it shook her out of her torpor. "I have an idea—since Lubbock
cannot now have my house, shall I ask if he might consider yours? I understand
he's impatient to settle down as soon as possible."

"Lubbock
will not consider mine. He too deals with Trident."

Even
in her residual apathy, she felt a stab of irritation. "Well,
we'll never know
unless we
ask,
will we? Hal Lubbock is an American, a roughneck, a born
and bred fighter. He's not scared of bullies!"

Ransome
still looked dubious. "But why should Lubbock want to
buy
unnecessary
trouble?"

"He's
a maverick; he doesn't give a damn about trouble. Perhaps he'll even thrive on
it! I feel it truly is worth at least a
try."

Ransome
scanned her face, his own uneasy. The colour had risen in her cheeks and her
expression was suddenly animated. "Now, now—you're not going to
appropriate for yourself more of my problems, are you, dear? I would much
rather your prime duty remained to your health and to your unborn child."

"Yes,
of course it will," Olivia murmured. But for the rest of the evening she
remained abstracted, lost once more in her own thoughts.

They
ate a simple supper of mulligatawny soup with warm, crusty rolls, and later
played a few desultory games of backgammon. Neither was inclined to make idle
small talk, both steeped in their separate ruminations and both sipping rather
more glasses of claret than they had intended.

"He
couldn't fight it, you know. And it finally killed him."

"What?"
Olivia was startled by Ransome's sudden remark just as she had asked for the
decanter to be refilled. It seemed apropos of nothing.

He
stirred out of his brooding study of the opposite wall and sighed. "Jai
was right to mock that night, Olivia. When it came to the crunch, face to face,
Josh didn't have the guts to pull the trigger on his son . . ." He broke
off, confused. "You . . . er, do know, I think, that Josh is ... was Jai's
father ...?" Never having said it before, he coloured.

"Yes."

He
was full of remorse. "Forgive me, my dear, if there are matters that I
have concealed from you, but there are areas of their lives, Josh and Bridget's
lives, that I did not feel morally competent to discuss with anyone. Now that
it is all over . . .," perturbed again, he hung his head low, "yes,
all over, there is no more need of shameful fabrications. I can now tell you
everything, even my own part in the sordid saga. It will be a relief for me to
unburden myself fully, that is," momentarily, he looked uncertain,
"if the nostalgic ramblings of a bereft old man will not bore you out of
your mind."

The
burning anticipation, the insatiable hunger with which Olivia
had once waited
for revelations about Jai Raventhorne's life had long been dissipated. Now if
she shook her head in denial of Ransome's hesitation, it was for her own
selfish reasons. Foreknowledge, she saw, was ammunition. Should it be her
misfortune to ever confront Raventhorne again, she would need adequate
weaponry. Mere hatred would not be enough. She leaned forward with interest and
asked, "What was it that stopped him from pulling that trigger? I can
hardly believe it was
compassion!"

"Compassion?"
Ransome laid his head back and looked up at the ceiling. "No. Not
compassion. Something less tangible, more abstract. I wish I could find a name
for it but I cannot." They had not yet talked of that strange evening, or
of its traumatic and far-reaching consequences. Olivia saw that it was there
that his thoughts now dwelt. "You see, my dear,
I
believe in
Estelle's innocence, but Josh never did. Despite all her protestations, he was
convinced that Jai had desecrated her—and he was insane with shame, with fury.
They were both his children, after all. That there should be such . . .
contamination between them lodged like a burning coal in his gullet. He knew he
now
had
to kill Raventhorne. He had no other option left."

Involuntarily,
Olivia smiled, not without some scepticism. Ransome had put it rather
curiously, considering that was what her uncle had been trying to do for years!

He
caught her thought and was again confused. "Yes, I know what you are
thinking, but there were factors, other factors . . ." He tossed up his
hands in apology. "I see that I must start at the beginning if I expect to
make sense of this. And the beginning, I suppose, is when Josh first met Jai's
mother up in Assam." His eyes crinkled at the corners in the effort to
recall a history more than three decades old. "Much of this is already
known to Estelle. Had she been told earlier, Josh might still be alive."
With unsteady hands he lit a much favoured cheroot and watched closely as a
perfect smoke ring shivered away into nothingness. "Anyway, Josh had gone
up into those hills to see for himself the recently discovered giant tea trees,
which everyone was talking about. He was very young then, newly wed in England
and awaiting the arrival of his bride. Our partnership had started to prosper
with regular China Coast runs, his mother had recently selected a handsome
residence for him—the present bungalow— and Josh himself was as carefree as a
lark." Visualising the past, his face seemed to come alive in the
recreation of that contentment. "But in those godforsaken mountains,
Olivia, strange
things happen to men's minds, especially to those of white men unused to the
jungles. She was, Josh said, a mere slip of a girl, innocent and untouched like
a naiad, a magical sprite spun out of moonbeams on a midsummer's night . .
." He stopped and blushed. "At least, that's how Josh described her.
Of course he was instantly smitten.
Bewitched
was the word he used
later. Like many hill people unsullied by civilisation—or what we believe to be
civilised—she was a child of nature, free as a mountain stream, delicate as a
petal. Josh had never seen anything like her and, well, he lost his head. He
forgot everything, past and future. Only the present mattered—and this ethereal
nymph sent by the gods to guide him through the portals of paradise." He
coughed and added quickly, "Josh's words again. Anyway, he eventually had
to return home, still befuddled with euphoria. But then Bridget arrived and,
within a week of their rapturous reunion, Josh had forgotten Assam as easily as
if it had been a dream. Perhaps to him a dream was all it had ever been."

Olivia
pulled her shawl closer about her shoulders. It was suddenly eerie talking
before flickering fire-light about a dead woman whose silver locket she had
once worn around her neck. She wished she had not agreed to listen with quite
such willingness; she wished she had not drunk so much wine either, but it was
too late. Drowned in his tumbling reminiscences, eager to shed their ancient
load, Ransome would be hurt if silenced.

"Unfortunately
for both Josh and the girl, she happened to be the only and much cherished
daughter of a tribal chief. Her involvement with a white man was a disgrace for
her people, especially when her condition became evident. Tribal laws are
rigid, the same for all. By consensus of the elders, she was expelled from
tribal country and told never to return. She had some silver jewellery. She
sold it and fled to the plains in search of the sahib she knew only as Josh. It
took her months to complete the journey, further weeks to locate the house. By
the time she arrived at the gate she was in a state of collapse and her child
was almost due."

A
detail flapped loose in Olivia's memory. "So, it was to the Templewood
house that she went, not to yours. And it was in those servants' quarters that
her child was born."