Zemindar (121 page)

‘Only a few more miles,’ we had been assured, yet the nightmare progression continued until five o’clock that evening. At that hour, suddenly, the Ganges lay before us—a brown stream, wide and slow, spanned by a bridge of wooden boats tied close together and covered by planks joining a rough roadway. Beyond the river, almost invisible for dust, lay Cawnpore. Smoke mingled thickly with the dust above low and clustered buildings, through which now and then a burst of orange flame thrust from some fired house. There was little we could make out with any precision, but there was little we needed to see to know ourselves again in the heart of war.

Shortly after our first sight of the river, we halted again. An officer came to the carriage to tell us that it would be hours before we crossed the bridge, and to snatch what rest we could while we were stationary. Sir Colin, he said, was already within the entrenchment …

‘Entrenchment?’ queried Kate in alarm. ‘But why? What entrenchment?’

‘It’s unfortunate, ma’am, but the firing … that was Tantia Topee and his lads. They attacked General Windham two days ago. Yesterday the General was forced to retire into his entrenchment and the town, or most of it, is now held by the rebels. They tried to cut the bridge of boats, too, but thank God without success. However, we may be fired upon as we cross, so be prepared.’

‘But … do you mean we will not be able to get on? To leave Cawnpore?’

‘Not at all, ma’am! No need for alarm. Early this morning our troops crossed over the river and, with the help of our heavy artillery—which is what you are now hearing—have forced the pandies back. They’ll soon be cleared out, never fear, and you’ll be on your way to safety and Allahabad as soon as it can be arranged.’

‘Good loving Lord, deliver us!’ groaned Kate, sinking back to her seat as the officer moved on down the line of carriages.

‘So near and yet so far,’ I murmured, while Jessie unbuttoned her dress for Pearl, which we had learned was her way of indicating some severe but inexpressible emotion.

All in all it required thirty hours for that mammoth column to cross the gently swaying bridge of boats into Cawnpore.

The moon had been up some hours when our wheels rattled carefully across the first rutted boards, and behind us for miles a snake of yellow light—carriage lamps, lanterns, and torches—winked through the dirty darkness, telling us that more than half the column had yet to reach the bridge. The nearby fire of heavy guns accompanied us as we slowly inched our way over the heaving planks. Rockets and shells lit the dark waters with their incandescence and showed us the ominous glower of flaming rafts drifting slowly downstream towards the wooden boats that formed the foundation of our ephemeral highway. Seldom have any prayers of mine been as sincere or as heartfelt as those I prayed during the tremulous half-hour required to cross the bridge. Next morning we were to learn that Dr Brydon had delivered a baby during the crossing, its first infant wails drowned in the crash of exploding grapeshot. Many a man had been wounded and some had died.

There came then, as the hollow reverberations of the bridge under our wheels gave way to the solid crunch of gravel, an eerie drive through a landscape of burned bungalows, shell-torn trees and huge clumps of spiky cactus laced together with spider webs, all bathed in silver moonlight. Nothing was discernible now of the pleasant and conventional Cawnpore of Kate’s memories. Gone were the pleasant gardens and gaieties of only twelve months before. What remained were ruins and terrible memories, the scent of cordite and, in the shadows, armed men once again protecting us in an extended picket as we made our way to shelter.

The following days were spent in a battered, whitewashed barrack, and mostly in longed-for sleep, as the battle continued for the town, and Sir Colin and his staff made arrangements for the departure of dependants and the sick to Allahabad.

Late on the afternoon of our arrival in Cawnpore, I awoke to find a letter from Oliver placed beside my head on the canvas cot. On the cover he had scrawled:
‘Written on 28th November,
but though Toddy has been absent most of the afternoon, he
cannot locate you. Sorry, O.’

I allowed a few moments to myself for the joys of anticipation, then opened the letter.

My dearest,

Here I lounge in the comfort of a tent, pitched and
prepared long before my arrival, yet they tell me that
‘the ladies’ are required to spend the night in their
conveyances! I am glad to know from Tod that your
carriage is at least adequate for your requirements during the day’s travel, but wish there were some way I
could see you more comfortably settled for the night.
What a perversion of human energy and sense a war
is, is it not?

Since I have received no letter from you in answer
to mine, I lack a hint of your present mood, a nuance
to guide me now. After I had despatched that last note,
I fell into a despondency, thinking it too negative,
concerned as it was with all those many things I cannot
do, cannot be, even for you, Laura.

I spoke only the truth—yet perhaps not enough of
it. Were it only my own inclinations I had to put away
on your behalf, perhaps I could manage it; I would,
at least, be free to try. But there are also my responsibilities, and these, whatever the present state of Oudh
and Hassanganj, I cannot dispense with at pleasure.
A great many people depend on me in one way or
another; when this madness is over, they will look to
me for help, for encouragement and advice. The villages of Hassanganj, unlike those of the neighbouring
talukhdars,
have been untroubled by any serious strife
for many years—until now. Rightly or wrongly, they
attribute their comparatively peaceful life to the attitude and endeavours of my family and myself. When
peace returns, it is to me that they will look for leadership and counsel—not to any government.

I am being tedious, I suppose, in listing my responsibilities but I want to show you why, even for
you, I cannot desert them. They did not come to an
end when the house was burned.

But after all, all explanations and justifications
aside, can you really imagine me sitting behind a desk
from 10 to 4 each day, existing only from shooting
season to shooting season?

I do not ask your agreement or approval, but read,
if you will, between these lines and try to understand.

            
Lovingly, Oliver

My dearest,

I could not write on the journey—we had no ink!
The wretched bottle was broken in the upheaval of
our departure, and oh, how much I wanted to fill the
many weary hours of delays and waiting with writing
to you! I could not expect Toddy, even the ever-resourceful Toddy, to find us in that incredible confusion, which, of course, did not prevent me from hoping
that he would.

But now, can you guess how many times I have
read and reread your last two letters? Can you begin
to imagine the comfort that just holding them in my
hands can bring me? To feel that at last we are talking
to each other, inadequately but honestly, again?

Oh, my dear, there is so much to say that cannot
be said in a letter, and even in a letter—where am I
to begin? It is night now, a very dark night, and tomorrow I shall go in search of Llew to deliver this to
you, but in the meantime I must find something to say among all the things I want to say. I suppose I am tired, but a strange constraint has hold of me. Will it do, for the moment, if I just say ‘Yes! I do understand’?

I have captured a lamp to myself, borrowed some ink and am sitting on my cot trying to think and write, while down the length of the barrack my ‘sisters in misfortune’ gossip and grumble and smack their children; and the children rush in cohorts through the serried beds, screaming with joy or bawling in well-deserved pain. I realize all at once that I have not spent a single night by myself in all the nights since we left Hassanganj. I have forgotten the sensation of privacy, but not the advantages, and now I wish I were alone, and quiet in a quiet place, and able to tell you something of all that is in my heart. All that comes to mind
in this infernal din, however, is an honest answer to the last question in your letter.

No, definitely not! I cannot imagine you spending
your days behind a desk in some grimy London office.

I do not want to imagine it, Oliver. I no longer
need to imagine it, Oliver. Oliver, do you understand?

Now
you
must read between these lines; and if you
do so correctly, spare me the embarrassment of explicitation. I have schooled myself to honourable surrender.

Lovingly, Laura

Laura,

Am I right? Is India acceptable to you? Are you really
learning to forget already? Can you truly forgive what
India has done to you?

My God, woman! I begged for a mood to follow,
a nuance to guide me. Not a thunderbolt!

For weeks I have tortured my simple masculine
mind in an endeavour to understand your loathing of
India, until that loathing became almost more real to
me than my own affection for the country. Now you
have destroyed the work of all my earnest striving by
indicating that you no longer hate the country. Yet,
you were once so vehement, so certain. Nothing could
ever make you live in India.

To say that I am flattered that my suit should be
sufficient to overcome your most understandable aversion to this country is to understate the fact. Yet it
also frightens me. Have you forgotten the marital doldrums of which we have already spoken? Think well,
my dear, think well! Can you be certain that a man
such as I, selfish, as you have often pointed out, spoilt,
too set in my ways, unable to bend, balky of temperament, and too sure I am right, can you be quite sure
that such a man can make up to you for the sins and
sufferings of your experience of India?

Have you really begun to forget? Can you ever
forgive?

Oliver

To which I replied:

No, Oliver. I have not yet forgotten, cannot yet forgive.

But I am willing to learn, to be taught—by you in
your arms.

And if that is not a damnable capitulation you have
forced me to, I don’t know what is!

Laura

In the evening of the day on which the foregoing exchange took place, I accompanied Kate, Jessie and a party of other ladies from the barrack to General Wheeler’s entrenchment.

Wheeler’s travesty of an entrenchment was but a walk away from where we were lodged. In the distance, yet still within the town, the inescapable gunfire continued, but within the low-walled enclosure silence was almost palpable. There were many others making the pilgrimage with us: small groups moving in shocked quiet about the ruined rectangle, gazing at the burned-out barrack where so many had died so terribly, wondering that the wreck of the second long building should ever have been considered shelter. Some of those present now knew that this was where their wives or husbands or fathers had died, and hardly an eye was dry.

Returned to our quarters, I again borrowed the ink and wrote my final despatch from Cawnpore. We were to set out for Allahabad on the following day.

Oh Oliver! I have been to Wheeler’s entrenchment,
and walked, with your living ghost ever present beside
me, the entire circumference of those pathetic walls.

I have measured, almost with a hop, skip and jump,
the distance between you and the guns of the enemy,
and have gazed with horror on the undefended emplacements of your artillery.

You know that I am not by nature pious, but I
prayed beside that terrible well, so close and open to
the raking pandy guns, a prayer of thanksgiving that
somehow you had safely slaked your thirst at it, a
prayer for the forgiveness of mistaken foolish Wheeler,
who unwittingly sent so many to their death at it.

I am depressed, horrified, disgusted and amazed all
at once. I am also awe-struck—not by the evident
heroism, but by the magnitude of the stupidity of human beings. Is all history merely the outcome, the
artificially hallowed outcome, of a chance concatenation of ignorance and arrogance in some one character?

How did you survive, Oliver? The walls scarce
reached my shoulders. How did you survive?

Laura

My dearest,

It is over. I have no answers. I survived. How? you
ask. Kismet, Ishmial would say. Luck would be
Toddy’s answer. And I? Sometimes I refer myself to
Providence, which then disquietingly asks the further
question ‘Why?’ I do not know how, nor why. Only
that it is finished, in fact and—as far as I can make
it so—in my mind.