The Empire Trilogy (97 page)

By some miracle the other infant, a girl born to Mrs Wright, the widow of a railway engineer who had been killed at the rampart some weeks earlier, survived. Mrs Wright was the sleepy young woman whom the Collector had found so desirable on the occasion of his visit to the billiard room. What was it that had attracted him? Perhaps it was her soft, drawling voice or the fact that, no matter how interesting the topic of your conversation, you would inevitably see her smothering amiable yawns as you talked; you would see the muscles of her jaw tighten and the tears start from her eyes as she tried to repress them. The Collector, for some reason, was attracted to ladies who were overpowered by the fumes of sleep in his presence, but not everybody enjoyed it as much as he did. The Magistrate, for example, when told that Mrs Wright had been taken ill, showed no interest whatsoever, and when further informed, a little later, that she had given birth, observed dryly: “I'm surprised that she had the energy.” This remark naturally made everyone furious. How typical of the Magistrate! The man was odious. No wonder he was so universally detested.

The garrison was extraordinarily affected by Mrs Wright's baby. Even gentlemen who did not normally display interest in babies sent anxiously to enquire about its progress. And it seemed perfectly natural, given the circumstances, that the child should be named “Hope”, though nobody knew whose idea it had been originally...probably not Mrs Wright's, however, for though in every respect resembling a Madonna, she was finding it more difficult than ever to stay alert. Only that drear atheist and free-thinker, the Magistrate, was seen raising a sardonic eyebrow at this name.

Now the time had come for Mrs Wright to be churched and the baby christened; every member of the garrison who was not occupied at the ramparts had assembled in the rubble-strewn yard of the Residency to hear the service, for it was no longer safe to hold a service in the ruined Church. A table which the Collector strongly suspected was his favourite Louis XVI had been brought out of the Residency drawing-room and covered with a clean white cloth to serve as an altar table.

“The snares of death compassed me round about, and the pains of hell gat hold upon me.” The Padre's voice reading the 116th Psalm echoed between the walls of the hospital and those of the Residency. The Collector listened from the Residency verandah, his head uncovered, but seated because he still felt too weak to stand for long. Between the ranks of bared heads (one or another of which would occasionally turn to take a quick glance of inspection at his own face) he could just make out the graceful figure of Mrs Wright herself, kneeling on a hassock in front of the table. Beyond her, there were more ranks of bared heads, this time facing the Collector; their eyes, too, scanned him greedily, looking for fissures...and further away still, two or three faces of sick or wounded men watched from the open windows of the hospital. How haggard and bereft of hope they looked! The Collector shuddered at the thought that he might have had to endure his own illness within those walls.

'The Lord preserveth the simple,” came the Padre's voice, quite aptly, it seemed to the Collector for he considered himself to be a simple man. “I was in misery and he helped me.”

His eyes came to rest on the tear-stained face of Mrs Bennett, whose baby had so recently died, and he suffered a pang of pity for her. How terrible it must be for her to attend this service for Mrs Wright whose baby had survived...and while the Padre was speaking the Collector accompanied his words with a silent, sympathetic prayer for Mrs Bennett: “O God, whose ways are hidden and thy works most wonderful, who makest nothing in vain, and lovest all that thou hast made, Comfort this thy servant whose heart is sore smitten and oppressed...” but the rest of the prayer was no longer in his mind, stolen no doubt by the foxes of despair that continued to raid his beliefs...in any case, it faded into a mournful reverie in which he sought an explanation for the death of Mrs Bennett's child. The Collector felt no confidence at all that her child had not been made in vain.

The lovely Mrs Wright, still on her knees, stirred sleepily and the Collector saw her profile mirrored in a pool of rainwater beside her.

“O Lord, save this woman thy servant.”

The Collector's moving lips silently accompanied the response. “Who putteth her trust in thee.”

“Be thou to her a strong tower.”

“From the face of the enemy.”

“Lord, hear our prayer.”

“And let our cry come unto thee.”

The Collector had pulled a grey handkerchief from his pocket to mop his brow and was gazing at it with pleasure, thinking again that he was a simple man at heart. The reason for his pleasure, as well as for the handkerchief's greyness, was that he had washed it himself...and really he had done just as good a job as the
dhobi
had been doing for the most extravagant prices. He had not washed merely a handkerchief either...his underclothes, too, had a grey look, and so did his shirt, whose grey cuffs peeped from beneath the dirty, tattered sleeves of his morning coat. He had done it all himself and without soap. Miriam had offered to do it for him, and so had Eliza and Margaret, and he could, of course, easily have given it to the
dhobi
in spite of his inflated prices. But it was the principle of the thing that mattered. He wanted to help those who were ashamed to be seen washing their own clothes but could not afford the
dhobi
's new prices...While quite capable of overlooking more serious misfortunes, the Collector was sensitive to such cases of threatened dignity. And so, to the
dhobi
's astonishment and terror, the Collector had suddenly materialized beside him at the water-trough. For a while he had stood there at his side studying how he worked, how he soaked the garments and slapped them rhythmically against the smooth stone slabs. Then he had set to work himself, though rather clumsily, he was still weak from his illness. Soon the slapping of his own clothes had counterpointed the rhythmic slapping of the
dhobi
's.

The news that the Collector had been seen doing his own laundry caused a mild sensation at first and was interpreted as the long-awaited collapse, particularly by those members of the garrison who had once belonged to the “bolting” party. But then the other faction, the shattered remains of the erstwhile “confident” party, had argued rather differently...far from being a sign of collapse it was, in fact, a sign of the Collector's
resolve
, his determination not to submit to oppression, to fight back, in other words. Soon he was joined by other Europeans and henceforth it became a common sight to see one or other of the ladies or gentlemen of the “confident” party slapping away at the trough where once the
dhobi
had slapped (for on the day after the Collector's appearance the
dhobi
had vanished from the enclave, either because he considered it too dangerous to remain any longer now that the commander of the garrison had assumed the caste of
dhobi
or, more likely, because he resented the competition). But perhaps the general, median view that was held by the garrison of this strange behaviour of the Collector was that it signified nothing more than his eccentricity.

“Yes, I'm a simple man. I don't believe in standing on ceremony,” the Collector congratulated himself piously. “But then, what else could I be when I look like a scarecrow and smell like a fox?” How ragged all these devout figures looked! One would have thought it was the congregation of a workhouse. Louise Dunstaple, who had once been so fair, now looked like some consumptive Irish girl you might find walking the London streets; in spite of the angry red spots on her pale brow she no longer wore the poultice of flour...the temptation had been too much for her and she had eaten it. To make things worse the women had now discovered lice in their hair. He had visited the billiard room that morning and his nerves had been set on edge by the distressing scenes he had witnessed. Yet the sobbing of the unfortunate women who had found lice in their hair had been easier to endure than the malicious pleasure of those who had found none. Why in such wretched circumstances, faced by such great dangers, did they still prosecute these petty feuds? The Collector had flown into a rage. In tones that had reduced the cannon outside the window to an occasional discreet cough he had lectured them on their duties to each other. They must help each other through these difficult times. If one of them found lice it must be a tragedy for all of them...they must comb each other's hair, help each other when they were sick, live as a community, in short.

They had listened meekly, shamed by his anger and, like children, trying to think of ways to please him; but once he had left the billiard room he knew that the feuds would start once more to germinate.

“Perhaps it is our fault that we keep them so much in idleness? Perhaps we should educate them more in the ways of the world? Perhaps it is us who have made them what they are?”

But the Collector was no better at suspecting himself of faults than of virtues. “But no. It's their nature. Even a fine woman like Miriam is often malicious to the others of her sex.” And he remembered with satisfaction, because it proved that he was not at fault, that Miriam and Louise had both approached him with some wild tale about Miss Hughes leading their brothers into debauchery and sensuality. Simply because the poor girl had happened to faint while not fully clothed! Ridiculous! He had been a little surprised that Miriam should surrender to this sort of jealousy, but perhaps he was not altogether displeased, because he found it feminine...in an attractive women even faults and weaknesses are endearing.

“Besides, Miss Hughes is made for sensual love as surely as the heron is made for catching fish. It's absurd to expect a heron to behave like a blackbird!”

Now the churching was over and it was time for the baptism to begin. The Collector was obliged to lift his heavy frame out of the chair on the verandah and advance to stand by the altar table, for he was to be godfather to the child. Meanwhile, the Padre had disappeared into the Residency for a moment. He came back carrying something draped in a table-cloth which, like a conjuror, he placed on the table.

As the Padre began the baptism the cannons fired almost in unison from the other side of the hospital and a faint stirring of breeze brought with it the brimstone smell of burnt powder. The infant, cradled in Miriam's arms, began to cry, but so feebly that its noise made hardly any impression on the expanse of open air. Miriam was smiling down at it while it squirmed and stretched, screwing up its tiny face and fists with the effort it was making. The Collector's mind wandered again as he thought of the baptism of his own children...how long ago it now seemed that the eldest had been baptized! Soon their own children would be born and he himself would become superfluous, an old man sitting in the chimney corner whom no one thought it worth their while to consult. He frowned at this suspected future injustice, but the next moment he remembered the siege and the fact that there was every chance that he would not live to suffer the humiliations of old age, and his thoughts promptly took a different line: “After so many hardships, how sad to be deprived of the tranquil evening of one's life!”

The Collector's face had assumed an alert expression, for the Padre was now addressing the godparents; but his still wandering mind was harrowed by the thought of the gentle, pious Mr Bradley of the Post Office department who, only the day before, had been deprived of the evening of
his
life, and the afternoon as well, come to that. By a singular misfortune Mr Bradley had been shot through the chest at the rampart when only the Magistrate was near at hand. And so the poor man had been obliged to die in as Christian a manner as possible in the arms of the atheistical Magistrate who had, of course, listened without the least sympathy to Mr Bradley's last pious ejaculations, impatiently muttering: “Yes, yes, to be sure, don't worry about it,” as poor Mr Bradley, looking up into that last, glaring, free-thinking, diabolical, ginger sunset of the Magistrate's whiskers, commended his soul to God. “Don't worry. They'll certainly let
you
in after this performance,” the Magistrate had said ironically as Mr Bradley made one or two more last-minute arrangements with Saint Peter for the opening of the celestial gates. Ah, what a terrible man he was, the Magistrate!

“Dost thou,” the Padre asked the Collector, “In the name of this child, renounce the devil and all his works, the vain pomp and glory of the world, with all covetous desires of the same, and the carnal desires of the flesh, so that thou wilt not follow, nor be led by them?”

“I renounce them all,” said the Collector, not very firmly, it was thought. Again the cannons fired, this time in succession. A vast bank of black cloud was mounting over the eastern horizon and advancing rapidly to bring the next downpour.

“O merciful God, grant that the old Adam in this child may be so buried, that the new man may be raised up in her. Amen, Grant that all carnal affections may die in her, and that all things belonging to the Spirit may live and grow in her. Amen.”

“Hurry up or we'll all be soaked,” the Collector exhorted the Padre silently. And then his thoughts wandered again and he began to worry about the speed with which the vegetation was growing around the ramparts. The grass, the creepers, the shrubs, the plants of every kind grew thicker every day, and the thicker they grew, the better cover they provided for the sepoys to advance undetected on the ramparts, but for some terrible reason, on the ramparts themselves nothing would grow.

The black cloud was right above them now and some of the congregation had begun to stir uneasily in expectation of the downpour, wondering whether the Padre would manage to get through the service before it fell. But even as he at last turned and, more like a conjuror than ever, whipped the cloth from the object on the table, which turned out to be a saucepan containing water scooped from the shattered font, the first heavy drops began to drum on the altar table; and while the Padre was saying: “Hope Mary Ellen, I baptize thee in the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen,” the Collector, forgetting that he had only just renounced an interest in the vain pomp and glory of the world, thought crossly: “That won't do the Louis XVI table any good at all.”