The Devil in Clevely (Afternoon of an Autocrat) (6 page)

She put on the lavender-coloured silk dress which, earlier in the day, as soon as the servant had gone off with the message, she had taken out and shaken. It was the last of four similar dresses presented to her as a parting present by Cousin Maud, whose generosity had exceeded her knowledge of what was suitable wear in India. She had known enough to say that India was no place for a white woman, but she had not known that it was equally no place for stiff silk, tightly waisted dresses with heavy panniers. Linda had soon removed the panniers and let out the seams of all four gowns. But in no time the silk had rotted and split; for in India one sweated--there was no other word for it--sweated like a coach-horse, and in the rainy season mould grew on one's dresses and shoes overnight. When the rose-pink, the blue-green, the yellow and the lavender gowns had all shown signs of immediate dissolution Linda had selected the lavender one, the most modest and practical-coloured of the four, and laid it away. When the others fell to pieces she had bought lengths of cheap flimsy cotton stuff in the bazaars and made herself some loose cool garments of curious style--a cross between the 'morning' prints she had worn at home, before she went to London to act as Cousin Maud's companion and amanuensis, and the clothes worn by Indian women.

The dress gave one or two ominous little creaks as she lifted it over her head, and more as she strained back her arms to manage the fastening; but as the long gleaming folds fell to her feet and the lace-lined sleeves covered her sharp elbows she knew a moment of rehabilitation. It was a dignified dress, a proper English dress, and she regretted that the amethyst necklace, Cousin Maud's wedding-present, had had to be sold. It would have done much to conceal the painful scragginess of her neck and collarbones. Poor Maud--she had herself made an amazingly advantageous marriage, and in dear little Linda's capture of Richard Shelmadine--such a charming man, and heir to a baronetcy--she had seen her own worldly success repeated, with additions; for Maud's own husband had been elderly, middle-class, invalidish and--to say the least of it--grumpy. Richard Shelmadine was only thirty-- just the right age for an innocent, unworldly girl of eighteen; and though he was wild, had indeed quite a bad reputation, everyone knew that a reformed rake made the best husband. Maud had done, had given everything that could possibly make the match start off well.

(There'd been that stormy interview at Clevely; Sir Charles had said, 'This is the last time, Richard. You marry and settle down or I'm finished with you!' And the perverse devil which ruled all Richard's actions had, two months later, derived the greatest satisfaction from composing a letter which said: 'According to instructions, sir, I have chosen my bride. She is the daughter of a poor parson; she has a dowry of five hundred pounds, the gift of her cousin who is the widow of a man who sold tallow candles with great profit; she is plain of face, rustic of manner but has the ability to make me laugh, and I can make her cry.' It was the last six words which proved to Sir Charles that there was no hope.)

The hat which matched the lavender dress was a genuine Leghorn straw, wide of brim and becoming; but it had changed colour. Much exposure to strong sunshine had darkened the straw and faded the amethyst ribbon almost to grey. Still, it hid a great deal of the straight bleached hair and in its shadow the hollows were less noticeable. As she pulled on her lace mittens--very carefully, for they too had grown brittle--Linda was satisfied that she looked, not attractive, but at her best.

The curtained, wheeled, scarlet-lacquered, silver-decked, cushioned litter which was provided for the use of those of the Rajah's harem who found it necessary from time to time to visit one of the various holy places in the district called for her exactly fifteen minutes and one hour before sunset. Indian time-keeping had always been, and remained, a mystery to her. (Richard had once said, 'It is your inquisitive, puppy-nosing-into-everything attitude that I find so engaging.') She had been interested to know that Surunda Ghotal, Rajah of Kilapore, a man whose wealth just could not be counted, owned no watch, no clock. Once, when she was thinking about the future, she had thought, if I could borrow a little money to start with and could find someone who could make watches and clocks cheaply and quickly, because it wouldn't matter if they didn't last, I could make a small fortune in India. She had had a vision of herself hurrying from city to city, from province to province, with a pack like a pedlar's, selling off the cheap time-pieces. Indians, particularly those who were coming more and more every day into touch with the East India Company, couldn't go on, surely, reckoning time by whatever means they used.

Still, the litter was punctual; it took exactly fifteen minutes, timed by Richard's watch, to cross the city from their horrid little hired house to the palace. She looked into the room where Richard lay, sprawled almost naked upon the bed, with an empty brandy bottle on the floor beside him, before she went out and climbed into the litter. The driver cracked his whip, the necklace of small golden bells which hung from the horses' necks set up their jingling, and she was off on her last ride through the city.

Today, meek as any member of the harem, she did not lift the curtains, which were just light enough not to be oppressive, just opaque enough to defeat curious eyes. During her first, and her second, and her third ride in this very litter she had lifted the curtain and peered out, making her observations and her comparisons and her comments. Now she knew it all--knew how the people, so many people in the overcrowded streets, made way for the litter and averted their eyes as they dragged their goats, and their children, and their overburdened donkeys, and their old people out of the way; knew how the driver used his whip on those who were slow. Once she had looked out and thought, suppose one, just one of those golden bells came loose and fell in the dust and somebody picked it up, how many bowls of rice could he buy? And had realised that if golden bells were freely broadcast they would lose all value, would buy no rice at all. Today she kept the curtains in place and rode unseeing past the crowds and the dreadful-looking beggars and through the dust and the filth. She had finished with Kilapore.

She knew, by the way the air freshened, when the litter passed into the palace precincts, a little above the city, refreshed by fountains, set with trees. Presently, with the fierce jerk which all Indian drivers considered stylish, the litter stopped, a waiting servant drew back the curtains, and Linda, after settling her hat which the jolt had tilted to a more-than-fashionably rakish angle, stepped out.

She remembered how impressive the palace had seemed the first time she saw it, which was at night, lit by the flare of many torches; and how amusing it had seemed on her second visit, in daylight. It was a vast rambling building which looked as though many successive owners had added to it and taken pains to see that each addition was individual and different. There was a central part, approached by a flight of marble steps and facaded with pillars, which was of pink plaster and which resembled an iced cake; there was a round tower made of purplish-red brick and a square one of grey stone topped with a silver dome; there was an outjutting wing entirely of wood, and everywhere there were balconies and cornices and buttresses and archways and shutters of varying materials and colours. Symbolic of India, perhaps, she thought, as she mounted the steps, passed on, as it were, from one to another of the white-clad servants who stood at intervals on either side and who raised their hands to their heads as she drew level with them and then slightly turned; symbolic of India--huge, sprawling, overdecorated, conforming to no pattern, full of contrasts and yet mounting up to something magnificent by virtue of very size. Magnificent and on the verge of rot. There was symbolism, too, in the shutters which sagged from their hinges, the balconies which would collapse if ventured upon. Piece by piece India was collapsing, falling into the hands of the East India Company. Surunda Ghotal's palace would hold together a little longer, and so would Kilapore, but they were doomed. She rather hoped that Kilapore would keep its independence just long enough, that the collapse would come after Surunda Ghotal's death, not before. Yet why she should feel sentimental about him she did not know...a few careless kindnesses which cost him nothing but the moment's attention needed for the giving of an order--should she be grateful to the point of sentiment for those? And could she blind herself to the fact that one of those half-crazed, hysterical, greed-frenzied potentates who started off by administering violent rebuffs and then listened to arguments and gave in would have been, in the end, of more value to her and to Richard than this grave, courteous old man who had received them so kindly, listened so attentively to all the arguments, asked for time to consider and then refused to give any concessions at all?

The servant on the uppermost step passed her on no further; instead he turned and led her through the now-familiar but still uncharted labyrinth of the interior of the palace, through high halls where her heels rang on the tiled floor, through narrow dim passages, through curtained archways, up stairs, down stairs. Finally a doorway gave upon a place which she had never seen before, a small enclosed space which denied absolutely the haphazard nature of the rest of the palace and its precincts, a little place of pure and formal beauty. It was walled all round with white marble, solid blocks to about shoulder height, and above that a two-foot-deep fringe of carving so delicate and intricate that it looked like petrified lace. From the point where she stood, and where the servant had halted and turned his hand palm upwards, pointing straight ahead, ran a path paved with the same white marble. On either side, between path and wall, was a space of bright-green grass, such as she had not seen since she came to India; and in each piece of green lawn, perfectly matched, were three fountains in play, the spray catching the light in broken rainbows. Set along each side of the path, in perfect symmetry, were small flowering trees, and at its end was a little marble summerhouse, traced over, but not embowered, with climbing roses. The whole space was artificially, mathematically precise, but it was beautiful, with the measured disciplined beauty of a sonnet. She stood for a moment taking in the cool delight; the green, the white, the fountains' graces, the little trees, so strictly shaped and each standing in its ring of fallen petals...then she looked towards the place where Surunda Ghotal sat, half reclining upon his couch in the summerhouse, his infirm leg propped out straight before him. In his youth, leading a punitive expedition against a rebellious Polygar, he had been wounded in the thigh and the wound had never healed; there were times when, close to him, you could smell the festering, rotten-sweet stench of it. Possibly because of his enforced inaction he had grown very stout, and the drugs which he relied upon to relieve the constant nag of the pain had made his hair sparse and dry, the whites of his eyes saffron-coloured, his lips and finger-tips a smoky purple. He was, at forty-eight years old, a very ugly old man; just as Linda Shelmadine, at thirty-three years of age, was a plain, prematurely aged woman. It was not admiration for one another's physical attributes which made the link between them, it was something more subtle--the recognition of the other's intelligence, and a shared measure of what Richard had called that 'inquisitive puppy-nosing-into-everything' quality.

Until the arrival of the Shelmadines in Kilapore, Surunda Ghotal had never seen a European woman, but he had heard about them from three independent sources. A member of his harem--and he had collected his women much as he had collected the items of his huge menagerie --had once, as a very sick child, been nursed by Portuguese nuns in a convent at Goa. To the best of her ability, years after, she had described them to her lord and master. Then, some years before the English East India Company had seen in Kilapore a possible field for exploitation, the French East India Company had sent one of its agents to spy out the land, just as lately Richard Shelmadine had been sent--and the Frenchman had shown Surunda Ghotal the little painted miniature of his mistress which he carried with him; and that woman had looked to be an entirely different breed of creature from the women whom the concubine described. Finally there was the evidence of his own eldest son, Jasma, whom he sent, in the year 1794, into Fort St George, to live incognito, with orders to get himself some job which would bring him into close contact with the English, and to learn the language. 'Moved I more easily I would go myself,' Surunda had said. 'I observe that they move with the inevitability of the locust swarms, and in your time, if not in mine, they will arrive in Kilapore. It will then be to our advantage to know what is said, since it is evident from what has happened in other places that hired interpreters have a foot, as they have tongue, in either camp. You will live,' said Surunda Ghotal, with his little secret smile, 'miserably, being unknown and in a state of servitude; therefore you will learn swiftly in order to escape. And you will then return and teach me.'

The scheme had worked well. Anxiety to return to Kilapore, combined with the Indian facility to acquire at least a superficial knowledge of any subject quickly, had soon put a term to Jasma's exile. The long sessions during which he endeavoured to impart what he had learned to his father were agony to them both, since it was unnatural for a son to instruct his father, and impossible for him to correct him. Nevertheless, by the time Richard Shelmadine--entrusted with the task of negotiating with the Rajah solely on account of his knowledge of Hindustani--arrived in Kilapore, Surunda Ghotal had acquired enough English to make himself understood by Linda Shelmadine, and in the end was able to regard his efforts as well worth while. She never knew that his demand for her to visit him, his very courteous reception of her, had been prompted by sheer curiosity; and she never guessed that behind his good manners, on that first occasion, an enormous amazement lay hidden. Jasma, among a thousand other observations, had given his report of those few intrepid European women who had ventured out with their menfolk to Fort St George. He said that they feared the sun always, and frogs sometimes, but were otherwise extremely bold; they took no interest in their surroundings but lived like trapped birds in a cage, awaiting the day of release; and, like birds, had two voices--the loud one in which they gave orders, the soft one with which they addressed their mates. Surunda's concubine from Goa had been impressed by, and anxious to emphasise, the complete sexlessness, the unselfishness, the otherworldliness and peculiar physical appearance of the Western women she knew, while the visiting Frenchman had, quite justly, emphasised precisely the opposite qualities in his particular specimen; so it was with the nearest thing to excitement possible to his sluggish nature that Surunda had heard of the arrival of an Englishwoman as far inland as Kilapore. At last his curiosity was to be satisfied.