The Empire Trilogy (103 page)

By this time poor Dr Dunstaple had voided a great deal of “rice-water” fluid and was seized by perpetual, agonizing cramps. He was delirious, too, and his breathing was laboured. He was clearly sinking fast. Finally, unable to bear it any longer Louise had gone to find Dr McNab. The trouble was this: although the native dispenser had applied Dr Dunstaple's treatments on numerous occasions under his direction, he was overcome by stage-fright at the prospect of applying them to the Doctor Sahib himself. His hands trembled and he constantly looked to Louise for advice and support. As for Mrs Dunstaple, she was so distraught that she no longer knew what she was doing and had been taken away, given a composing draught surreptitiously obtained from Dr McNab, and put to bed on her shelf in the pantry.

“I can only treat Dr Dunstaple as I would treat any of my patients and I fear that your father would not agree to my methods. But if you want I shall attend him.”

Louise hesitated. Her father was now so sunk in his illness, so delirious, that he was barely conscious.

“Treat him as you think best, Doctor, but please hurry.”

Within a few moments of Dr McNab's saline injections Dr Dunstaple had begun to revive. Louise was astonished by the sudden improvement; she could feel the warmth returning to her father's limbs and see his breathing becoming easier every moment. It had been like a miracle. But as Dr Dunstaple's brain cleared he had demanded to know why there was no mustard-plaster on his stomach. Dr McNab had thoughtfully retired as his patient was regaining consciousness, for fear of irritating him. Meanwhile, Dr Dunstaple was gradually coming to realize that other things were missing. Where were the calomel pills and opium and brandy? Why were there no hot compresses on his limbs? Louise tried to soothe him and persuade him to drink the antiseptic draught which McNab had given her. But he had demanded to know what it was, and finally poor Louise had been obliged to explain what had happened. He had sunk so low that she had been obliged to approach Dr McNab for his help.

“Miserable girl! D'you want to kill me? Bring back the mustard-plasters instantly! Bring brandy and the other medicaments I ordered. Hot compresses and be quick about it or else I'm doomed!”

Such was the Doctor's rage, so accustomed was Louise to obedience, that she could not prevent herself from hurrying to execute his orders. By this time Harry was there too, saying: “Look here, we don't want that McNab fellow putting his oar in. Father seems to be treating himself well enough without help from him.”

Alas, soon the Doctor began to sink again. Miriam, unable to endure this harrowing sight a moment longer had fled from the tiger house.

Fleury was beside himself with distress, but more for Louise's sake than for the Doctor's (he had privately come to consider his prospective father-in-law as an opionated old fool). He begged Miriam to hurry back and find out how the old man was faring under his own treatment. But no sooner had Miriam gone than Harry suddenly returned looking more cheerful than one might have expected. He told Fleury that his father had once again sunk very low...almost to death's door. Again McNab had been summoned and again he had insisted on clearing away the mustard-plasters and compresses. Again he had injected a saline solution into the Doctor's blood vessels. And again, wonderful to relate, the Doctor had made an astonishing recovery.

But hardly had Harry finished imparting this encouraging news when Miriam returned, her face showing deep concern. Harry must go at once to help Louise. Apparently there had been yet another terrible scene when the old Doctor, his wits once more restored by salt and water, had discovered that he had again been disobeyed. Dr McNab, too, had been angry: “Every time I revive him he abuses me! How much longer am I supposed to put up with this?” Dr Dunstaple, in any case, had settled the matter by clearing everyone out of the tiger house except for the unfortunate dispenser, who was ordered to adhere to the Dunstaple treatment until death, if necessary, and to lock the door against everyone else.

Fleury and Miriam waited in silent depression for further news, but none came. Presently they went out on to the verandah where it was cooler. The sky was sprinkled with stars. Soon the rainy season would be over, Fleury thought, and the sepoys would once again be able to dig mines and to launch concerted attacks. Counter-mining would be impossible given their shortage of powder; at best they might be able to break into the enemy mines and fight it out hand-to-hand. But would they even have the strength to dig counter-mines? It was not an encouraging prospect.

“Listen to the jackals.”

Somewhere not far away, surrounded by jungle, Chloë and the sepoy lay side by side and rotted, or were eaten by the specialist animals of the night.

Towards morning they heard that Dr Dunstaple had died, inconclusively, of a heart attack.

The curious thing about Dr Dunstaple's death was that although the harrowing circumstances which had attended it were well known throughout the camp, it was not generally considered that, by dying, the Doctor had lost his argument with McNab. After all, it was maintained, who was to say that the Dunstaple treatment was not just beginning to work each time as McNab began to apply
his
treatment? The Doctor's subsequent relapse might well have been because of Dr McNab's interference. Above all, Dr McNab was discredited by the fact that he had “stuck needles” into Dr Dunstaple. It made little difference that these needles had been for injections and not for some sinister Chinese purpose. Besides, McNab was a Jew. He'd said so himself.

“I never believed such stupidity could exist,” the Collector said to McNab, for whom he had come to entertain a great respect.

“Och, they're confused. They'll learn in time.”

But still the notion that Dr Dunstaple had been right somehow persisted, independent of thought or reason, as insubstantial as the supposed “invisible cholera cloud” itself which Dr Dunstaple believed had once hung over Newcastle. But McNab continued as he always had, grave and rather lugubrious, knowing that given time, the “cholera cloud” would move on, too, and that his own view would come to be accepted...but this would only happen imperceptibly and not, perhaps, like a cloud passing, but more in the way that sediment settles in a glass of muddy water.

At the end of August the rains stopped as suddenly as if taps had been turned off. September was considered by the English community even under normal conditions to be the most unhealthy month of the year; while the hot sun resumed its office of drying out the pools of water which had collected on the sodden earth, fever-bearing mists and miasmas hung everywhere. Clouds of flies and mosquitoes pursued every living creature.

Hardly had the rains stopped when the spectators began to return to the slope above the melon beds, coming in greater numbers than ever before. No doubt this was because the weather was much better, now that September was under way; it was cooler and the spectators could stroll in the sunshine without needing the shade of umbrellas. Some of the wealthier natives brought picnic hampers in the European manner, and their servants would unroll splendid carpets on the green sward; while their banquets were spread out on the carpets they could watch what was going on through telescopes and opera-glasses which they had had the foresight to bring with them...though what they saw, as they swept the ramparts of the Residency and banqueting hall can hardly have looked very impressive to them: just a few ragged, boil-covered skeletons crouching behind mud walls. But they settled down, anyway, with satisfaction amid the bustle of the fairground, like gentlemen returning to their seats in the theatre after the interval. It did not look as if this last act would take very long.

The garrison, too, had taken to watching the spectators through telescopes, above all to see what they were eating. The more weak-willed of the defenders very often spent more time watching the native princes eating their banquets than they did watching the enemy lines. Food had become an obsession with everyone; even the children talked and schemed about it constantly; even the Padre, at this period, could hardly fall asleep without dreaming that ravens were coming to feed him...but alas, no sooner did these winged waiters arrive with nourishment than he would wake up again. But in spite of everything perhaps it was just as well that none of the things they could see...none of the plump fish or chickens being toasted on skewers, none of the creamy breads, chapatis, nan, and parathas, none of the richly bubbling curries and glistening mounds of rice, which the skeletons' scarlet rimmed eyes could see in their lenses and at which they glared for hour after hour...that none of these things were available, for in their starved and debilitated condition it was very likely that a heavy curry would have killed them as dead as a cannon ball.

Desperate remedies were resorted to in the search for food. Any piece of rotten meat that could still be found in the enclave was slipped over an improvised fish hook, attached to a rope and hurled over the parapet in the vain hope of catching a jackal or a pariah dog that might swallow it. Mr Worseley, the engineer, shot a thousand sparrows and made a curry out of them, which all who tasted it proclaimed excellent, but which aroused the Collector's fury because of the waste of powder and shot. The men at the ramparts had often tried in vain to tempt one of the stray artillery bullocks near enough to capture it, but at long last, towards the end of the first week of September, an old horse was captured at the banqueting hall and put to death. The meat was distributed as rations, the head, bones and entrails used for soup, and the hide cut into strips for the children to suck. For a day and a night the feasting on the horse filled everyone in the enclave with a dreadful exultation, but gradually it died down as the garrison came to realize that one horse was hardly enough to stay their hunger for more than a few hours. This meal of horse might be compared to the draught of air that a drowning man who has fought his way to the surface manages to inhale before being whirled down into the depths again. After the besieged had licked the corners of their mouths and sucked their fingers clean one by one, the cold ocean of hunger closed over their heads again with scarcely a ripple to be seen.

On September 10th, which was Louise's birthday, Fleury bartered his gold cufflinks, a silver snuff-box, and a pair of shoes with Rayne in exchange for two lumps of sugar. He ground the sugar into a powder, mixed it with water and with his daily handful of flour, adding a little curry powder to give it a spicy taste: then he grilled the result on a flat stone beside the fire. He also bought a teaspoonful of tea from one of the artillery women for ten pounds, to be paid after the siege was over or, in case of death, by his executors to certain of her relations; to lend substance to this rather nebulous arrangement which at first only seemed to excite the suspicion of the woman selling the tea, Fleury had drawn up an elaborate letter which began impressively: “To Whomsoever May Find This Missive, I, George Fleury, Being Then Deceased,” and which seemed to Fleury to give a certain legal solemnity to the transaction. Thus provisioned, he invited Louise to come to the banqueting hall to celebrate her birthday, though in a very quiet way, he assured her; he had not forgotten that she must still be suffering on account of her father, who had only recently taken his last dive down the well in the Residency yard in the wake of so many of his former patients.

Fleury's cakes had not turned out very well; in fact they had dried as hard as the stone they were baked on, and had to be chipped off it with a bayonet. But even so, Louise was so hungry that she stared at them with a fearful concentration, ignoring Fleury's polite conversation as he made the tea. Unfortunately, when the time came to devour the cakes, she found she had difficulty in eating hers because of its hardness. She tried exchanging it for Fleury's but that was just as hard. The trouble was that Louise, like a number of other members of the garrison, was suffering from scurvy; there had been several cases of partial blindness and of swollen heads, but the most common symptom, and the one which was troubling Louise, was the loosening of teeth. She felt that her teeth would come out altogether if she tried to bite Fleury's cake. Fleury was not sure that his own teeth were very sound either so they decided that the best thing to do was to suck the cakes and perhaps dip them in the tea to soften them. Besides, in one way it was an advantage that they were so hard, because they would last longer. But in spite of their hardness they seemed to vanish in no time. Louise looked at Fleury and felt so vulnerable that presently she began to cry.

“Oh I say, what's the matter?”

But Louise could not tell him. Apart from the fact that she believed her teeth to be on the point of falling out, she had not had her period for several weeks and was afraid that she was barren. She wanted desperately to confide in someone about this, but once again found it impossible to find anyone suitable...her mother was too distraught, her father was dead, and she could not bring herself to mention it to Miriam for fear of provoking some too blunt observations on the mysterious workings of a lady's insides. After a while, however, she forced herself to smile, and dried her eyes on one of Fleury's shirt sleeves that looked fairly clean. She promised herself that she could continue sobbing later on, after she had gone to bed in the billiard room. Sobbing there was so commonplace that nobody noticed any more.

It had become evident by now that the sepoys were preparing to make a major assault in order to bring about the end of the siege. From the observation post on the Residency roof Mr Ford reported that new contingents of sepoys were streaming into the enemy lines from every direction. It was impossible to be sure whether these were new recruits to the Krishnapur field, perhaps freed from the victorious siege of the
feringhees
somewhere else on the plain, or simply men who had deserted during the rains returning now to finish the job. Among the arriving troops, however, Mr Ford noticed several squadrons of lancers trailing the green flag of Islam; they looked much too well drilled and well equipped to be merely returning deserters. He also noticed several cannons being dragged into the sepoy camp by bullocks from the direction of the bridge of boats.