Zemindar (106 page)

‘You’re a dreamer of dreams,’ I said, mostly to fill the enquiring silence.

‘Of only one dream—that I have been bred in.’

Moved by the intensity of his manner, I walked a few paces along the flat roof.

‘Laura?’

I paused, without turning.

‘What do you say?’

‘What am I to say?’

He followed me and stood looking down at my bent head as I pretended to gaze over the almost invisible city.

‘I have told you this because I want you with me.’

‘I know.’

‘In holy wedlock, of course!’ he added with a brief resumption of his old sardonic manner.

‘I had paid you the compliment of presuming so.’

‘My idea in approaching Jessie was that she would make an excellent companion for you. You know and like her well, and I suppose it might be strange for you in Hassanganj at first. She could take all the dreary household tasks out of your hands.’

‘And thus leave me free to minister to my master!’ I said tartly.

‘Oho! So she talked then!’ And he grinned, quite unabashed. He was relaxed now, at ease. Apparently he considered his battle won. I turned and looked up at his hawkish face, so thin and strained despite the smile. There was so much I wished to say to him, to explain, even to discover for myself through my own words. All I said, however, was, ‘Her exact words were that your wife would have her hands full taking care of you!’

‘And so she will,’ he smiled, taking both my hands in his one. ‘So she will! I’ll want you by me every moment of life, waking and sleeping. I want you with me in the office; you were always good with figures and quite a help to me over those inventories, do you remember? I had great trouble persuading Benarsi Das to destroy the perfectly good copies he had made, so that I could give you something to do that would keep you near me. And when I ride to the villages you will come with me, and you will sit in the
kutcheri
, the court, three times a week to see that I temper justice with mercy. We will plan our new house together, and watch it being built together. We’ll go shooting and hawking and fishing and will climb in the hills in the summers. I’ll teach you Persian on cold winter evenings—oh! and you must continue with your Urdu, of course; it will prove very useful with the women, and the local lingo you’ll pick up in no time. By God, how I wish we could start right away! I’m back where my grandfather was, in a way, but with all his experience to help me, and with luck a surer foundation to build on. It will be magnificent, Laura. Exhilarating!’

‘Aren’t you overlooking one thing?’ I said, disengaging my hands and turning from him. I knew he was looking at my averted face steadily but he made no response, and I was furious because my voice quivered as I went on: ‘I cannot think of living in Hassanganj.’

Still he remained silent, and I was forced to continue without any encouragement but that of my own unhappy conviction.

‘I cannot … I cannot continue to live in India! I know you do not understand; I cannot expect you to. But it is the truth, none the less. I cannot remain out here. Once before, long before all this took place, I remember feeling the same thing, not so strongly of course. It was when we had encountered the
suttee
procession in the forest. I found myself filled with an overwhelming repugnance for India and everything Indian—because I could not understand it, sympathize with it. Because, I suppose, I knew I could never change it. In time I overcame that. But now, all that has happened to us in the last few months, and to our friends and to you too, Oliver—it has all accumulated and … and solidified in my mind, so that, while I am trying not to loathe India, I know I will never now love it. Never forgive it sufficiently, I suppose, to live in it without fear.’

‘Woman dear, that cannot be the truth.’

‘But it is, Oliver, it is! I wish it were not—most truly I wish it were not so, but I cannot bring myself to remain in India.’

‘Laura, do you not love me then, after all?’

Tears came to my eyes at the gentleness of his tone.

‘Oh, Oliver, I do! You know I do!’

‘I thought so—only a few minutes ago. But if you did, you would be able to accept my life here. Is that not so?’

‘No! Not under the circumstances. My experience of India has been a great deal more than merely unpleasant, Oliver. It has been terrible.’

‘And only that?’

‘Of course not. There have been—there were happy times and pleasant ones.’

‘As there will be again. I promise you!’

I shook my head. ‘Never for me,’ I said. ‘Never!’

A strained silence ensued, and neither of us moved.

‘Then,’ he said slowly, ‘you are refusing me … my home and my idea of a good and rewarding life, simply because of what has happened here in Lucknow?’

I am sure, now, that that was the truth, so far as there was truth in the matter at all. I took my time in answering, trying to work out in my mind just what had affected my decision. I knew I should have felt complimented by his desire for my companionship as well as my love, and by the confidence he reposed in my understanding of the affairs of Hassanganj; I had always felt that a passion that precluded comradely sharing was not love at all. Yet now some perverse impulse made me see in his vision of our joint life a selfishness in him that overrode my own interests and expectations. Perhaps it was fear at impending loss that drove me to try to mitigate that loss by seizing once again on my old, mistaken interpretation of his character.

I began to speak, coldly and in a precise and distant fashion: ‘No. It is not wholly my experiences in this place …’

‘Charles?’

‘Of course not!’ My voice held more of its customary vehemence.

‘I wish I could be sure of that … but go on.’ And now it was he who was cold and contained.

‘I … I can acknowledge the attraction of your plans for Hassanganj, your dream of a useful, busy life—for a man. But quite apart from what I have endured here in India none of your schemes have left room for the fact that I … that I am a woman, and that as a woman I have needs and requirements separate from yours and a desire to fulfil them in my own way.’

‘Oh!’ For a moment he was puzzled. ‘Oh! If you mean
children
, why, you can have as many as you please. Jessie will be there to deal with them!’

In fact I had not given a thought to children, but as the idea presented itself, I seized it.

‘Yes—I do mean children,’ I agreed warmly, ‘among other things. I want to bear my children in safety, knowing they will have the chance of a normal childhood, and not end as Johnny Avery did, or Jessie’s Jamie, and so many others. Is that so unreasonable?’

‘No, but Hassanganj will be safe for them again, and with Jessie to help you …’

‘But Hassanganj will always be India, and what peace of mind would I ever know there now? And you have never taken into account that I may be reluctant to leave my own home and family …’

‘But you haven’t any.’

‘Or that I too have strongly developed loyalties … and affections.’

‘You are rarely sentimental,’ he said, almost thoughtfully, as though he were trying to discern another meaning behind my words. His expression had changed from the puzzlement apparent at my first objections to watchfulness.

‘I realize you compliment me in wishing me to share your life as fully as you have described,’ I continued, trying desperately to explain myself adequately under his wary gaze, ‘and once perhaps I would have been able to. But I am no longer the eager, curious young woman I was in Hassanganj. Too much has happened, I have seen and learned too much of matters of which I would sooner have remained ignorant. I have changed, Oliver. And I have learned my limitations. I could not live with my fears. I would always be watchful, suspicious, anxious that once again there would be horsemen in the night and a house on fire. Even with you I could not live in such un-ease.’

‘But with peace, Laura, when things are settled …’

‘It is not peace, nor the things that can be settled. The difficulty lies in me, Oliver. I feel you are being over-riding and insensitive in not seeing that. I believe even you will live for a long while looking over your shoulder—in uncertainty. But you will have your work. Your purpose. Whatever you say, I will be much alone, with only my fears—and my memories. I cannot do it.’

‘You mean that, Laura?’

I nodded, drained and miserable. His eyes travelled over my face and I became conscious of my horrid fringe of ugly hair, my thin cheeks and sunken eyes and the deplorable condition of my clothing. Conscious, too, that he had not yet understood me. In the silence that enclosed us, I recalled with anguish the many strange endearments he had used to me, telling me in Urdu that I was the light of his world, fairer than the rose and purer than the snow, and also that the ultimate words of love ‘
jan se aziz
’, dearer than life, had been reserved for his lion-coloured acres of Hassanganj.

‘What is it you
do
want, Laura?’ he asked at last with such unaccustomed pleading that my throat constricted.

‘Some … some security,’ I answered quietly. ‘A home, perhaps, in some small English town, and a regular, expected sort of life. A quiet life.’

‘Surely a husband?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘A husband like Charles!’ His voice cut like a whiplash.

‘Oh, you
fool
!’ was all I could find to say, and when I looked up with blazing eyes encountered an equal anger in his.

‘No, my dear. It’s you that are the fool!’ he answered and grabbed me to him with his one arm, holding me to him tightly. ‘That’s who you really want, isn’t it—still, and despite everything? Perhaps you’ve already had a surreptitious sample of delights to come when the conventions allow. From your noble Charles. How many weary hours have been made bearable by the memory of soft sighs, languishing looks and half-expressed aspirations—the tender joys of protracted wooing?’

‘How dare you! Let me go!’ I was furious, but had to keep my voice low, as Captain Germon and his wife, Maria, were somewhere about in the house below us. And I was hurt, cut to the quick by his words and the tone in which he had spoken them.

‘No! Not yet. Hear me out. I’ve chosen you because I see in you all the qualities I want in the woman who is to be my life’s companion. You are realistic, ruthless and honest—generally. You are capable of humour, generosity and sincerity—usually. You have energy and initiative and are as stubborn as a mule. All admirable qualities, and I appreciate them in you as much as I acknowledge them in myself. Your only weakness is that you have been reared to believe a man loves a woman solely because she
is
a woman. I’m no longer capable of that sort of love. I have had it—and often—but it is not enough. But you— you continue to think you must be cosseted as a weaker creature, protected from the buffetings of fate. Though how you can fool yourself that anyone (and least of all Charles) is going to take such a view of your character, after the way you have battled through this siege, is beyond my comprehension.’

‘Will you let me go!’ I muttered through clenched teeth, near to tears.

‘No! Be quiet and listen to me! You say you do not want to be alone with your fears and your memories. What you mean is that you know you will not receive from me the conventional attentions you could expect from a man like Charles. In your heart you want me to dance attendance on you, as Charles would do, and perhaps has done, making you the pivot of my besotted mind. But I am not besotted, I love you with honesty, and I am offering you a great deal more than an ever-ready hand with a chair or a door or a carriage step. Oh, I desire you! Do not doubt that. I want, and intend, to love you, to make love to you, to bed you, whichever the discreet euphemism may be that you best understand and will accept … not now, woman, at the moment you are about as appetizing as a navvy! But that is what I intend, and by God, Laura, no miss-ish haverings on your part now are going to prevent me. I mean to marry you. The only thing that will stop me is the honest assurance from you that you love Charles—not me. In that case, believe me, I will desist immediately and leave you free to pursue your suburban idyll with him in England. But not until I have that assurance from you will I give up hope of you.’

‘How can you speak as you do? Oh, Oliver, you must know I love you and you only.’

‘No, damn it! Hoped it, thought it, felt it sometimes—but known it … never!’

‘But I do love you, most truly and with all my heart and have thought that I had conveyed my feeling to you adequately. You are just being cynical. Because you are angry.’

‘Cynical? Perhaps. I have had enough experience of your sex to make cynicism pardonable. But the truth is that, even sometimes as I kissed you, I have remembered something. Something that I would sooner forget and cannot.’

‘What?’

‘The expression in your eyes once, when I caught them meeting Charles’s eyes. In a mirror in Hassanganj. Do you remember? You were very embarrassed. And annoyed, naturally.’

‘I remember. But that was so long ago. What I felt then for Charles was … hero-worship, I suppose, or perhaps a sort of aggravated sentimentality. You can call it anything you like. It was not love as I know love is now—with you. You must believe that, Oliver.’

‘Yet you have never looked at me in quite that fashion.’

‘Oh, nonsense!’ I said sharply. ‘Now who is expecting the ridiculous inanities of “protracted wooing”?’

‘Hmph!’ He looked down at me quizzically, then released me, but held one hand. ‘Then, Laura, what has all this been about?’

‘I don’t know. Could it be that we just enjoy quarrelling? Or is it about other things, things quite different to any we have mentioned?’

His cheek was laid against my hair, and I could sense his attention to my words.

‘Yes?’

‘Perhaps … perhaps it is about the peepul grove that starry night and the poor Wilkinses with their frightful eyeless torn faces and the flies gorging themselves in the opened bellies. Perhaps it is about Elvira, who must have been so frightened before they killed her. Perhaps it is about little Johnny screaming to his death in a bed of orange cannas; or Connie, who must have known what was coming, even though she would not learn the language. Perhaps it is about a scream I heard that day in the ice-house thatch, and a shot I fired into a man’s living face. Perhaps it is about the desperate sense of isolation we all knew in Wajid Khan’s
zenana
, or about smallpox and cholera. Perhaps it is about … the awful smell when poor dainty Emily lay dying, or about Mr Roberts shooting himself in despair, or about you lying sunstruck in your own blood on a sandbank.’