Zemindar (22 page)

In spite of my own aversion to Mr Erskine, my heart sank at Charles’s words and manner. There would be no hope now of our seeing Hassanganj and the ‘real’ India. And perversely, because Charles had condemned his brother without a hearing, I began to think more kindly of him myself.

When the dance ended, Charles got up from his sofa and immediately commanded his wife to collect her cloak while he had his carriage called. I went upstairs with Emily to help her find her things and to repair the depredations of the evening on my own appearance and learnt without astonishment that my young cousin was quite captivated by Mr Erskine.

‘He really is the most charming man after all,’ she declared, as soon as we were alone in the bedroom whose bed was covered with cloaks, wraps and gay, gauze scarves. ‘So polite and well-bred. He doesn’t dance very well—stiff, you know—but he said I was the first woman he had danced with in years, so I had to forgive him that.’

‘I hope you made a better impression on him during the dance than you did before it,’ I said sternly.

‘Oh, that.’ Emily giggled. ‘I was delighted to pay Charles back in his own coin. And Mr Erskine of course never mentioned it, so why should I worry?’

‘It wasn’t right of you, nevertheless. Charles is in a fearful temper, and will surely scold you all the way home.’

‘Well, let him! I don’t care a fig if he does. I’ve done what I wanted to, just once, and I’m ready to pay for it,’ she answered defiantly, and then, in a plaintive voice, ‘If he wouldn’t always try to stop me doing the things I like doing. If, even, he wouldn’t always try to make me do the things I don’t like doing. But, don’t you see, we are always running against each other … because … because we don’t think alike! He’s such a … such a curmudgeon now, Laura, really he is.’ And in spite of myself, I smiled.

She was silent for a moment, regarding her pretty face in the candle-lit looking glass, but not apparently seeing it.

‘But Mr Erskine—Oliver, I suppose I should call him—you couldn’t call him really
ugly
, could you, Laura?’

‘I could!’

‘No! Not
ugly
. Certainly not handsome either. Arresting! That’s it! I think he has a most arresting face, and I shall tell Charles so directly we are alone.’

I was very glad I was not to accompany them home. The journey, I felt, was going to be an unquiet one.

I remained with the Barrys for the rest of the evening, and now that I was free to do so, accepted every invitation to dance. A knot of young officers had gathered round Kate and George when I returned to the ballroom—they were a popular pair in cantonments—so I had no want of partners. Mr Erskine hovered in the background, but I had no further conversation with him until, towards the end of the evening, he too asked me to dance. I was surprised; he had seemed quite content to stand talking with one or two of the older members of the party, and I had not supposed my charms would be sufficient to lure him on to the floor. The departure of Charles and Emily had relieved my mind and spirits, I had begun to enjoy myself, and was determined that not even a dance with Mr Erskine would stop me doing so. I accepted his hand with a good grace and walked on to the floor humming the refrain of the music.

To begin with, he was very solemn and silent. As Emily had said, he was an unpractised dancer, so perhaps he was concentrating on the music and his feet. Usually I find it easy to fall in with a companion’s desire for silence, but Mr Erskine kept his eyes on my face with a sort of frank, unsmiling curiosity that embarrassed me, and I was casting about in my mind for a subject to discuss that was not too trivial when he broke the silence himself, and in the most banal way imaginable.

‘And what is it that brings Miss Hewitt to India?’ he asked in a tone dangerously near to condescension.

This was a question which I had long become tired of answering, particularly since most people who put it had already answered it to their own satisfaction. The only valid reason for an unattached female, a ‘spin’, to visit India was matrimony.

‘I am in a sense
in loco parentis
to my cousin Emily,’ I replied shortly, and then, desiring to get everything said as soon as possible, and at the same time acquit myself of the charge of husband-hunting, went on hurriedly, ‘In fact I am her companion, her
paid
companion. She is very young, as you see, and still a little giddy, and her parents did not want her to come out here for so long on her own.’

‘Hm. Very commendable of her parents no doubt, but, surely, coming out here with her husband cannot really be considered coming out here on “her own”? Or am I too optimistic in my views of the married state? Is … er … “companionship” between man and wife really as impossible as your remarks, and indeed your presence here, would lead one to believe?’

‘I think you choose to misunderstand me, Mr Erskine,’ I countered coldly.

‘Oh, not at all, not at all! I honestly think it most commendable of Emily’s parents to have such concern for their daughter’s well-being—even after she had left the nest, as the saying goes—and more especially as her husband appears to have little control over her, a fact of which her parents are no doubt aware.’

‘Oh, no, you must not think that Emily always goes against Charles’s wishes as she did tonight. There were peculiar circumstances involved and, as I say, she is still a little giddy.’

‘Ah!’ I did not like his tone of voice. ‘So that is all there was to it. Well, it was not hard to guess that they had had a quarrel. But now tell me, Miss Hewitt, is it your duty to smooth the path of matrimonial bliss and keep the peace when it is threatened by Emily’s er … giddiness? Is that a part of a “paid companion’s” duties?’

‘Of course not! It is none of my business! None at all.’ But he must have known I was lying, for when I looked up at him he was smiling and I was irritated to discover he had a very pleasant smile.

We looked at each other measuringly for half a turn of the room—he smiling, I wary, and then he shook his head and said, ‘Poor Miss Hewitt. I hardly know which of you two is more to be pitied, for never have I met two young ladies less suited to offer each other companionship.’

‘We were brought up together in the same house,’ I answered with redoubled stiffness, ‘and are very fond of each other. Emily is like a sister to me.’

Unconvinced, he merely laughed and shook his head, and I felt my cheeks flush with annoyance. I knew what he meant, of course, but it was unkind of him to remark on how little alike Emily and I were. I knew too well my own deficiencies of appearance and character not to guess where his preference would lie, and for a moment, very irrationally, I wished that I had Emily’s grace, beauty and gaiety, or even something approaching them. Not that I wished to charm him. Quite the contrary, I thought to myself, remembering that ambiguous ‘I am so sorry’ when he was introduced to Emily as Charles’s wife. But when I looked up again, he was still smiling that unusually pleasant smile, so that I felt called upon to smile in feturn.

‘That’s better!’ he said, taking a firmer grip of my waist as we whirled down the room. ‘I see you are a thinker. But now, you haven’t the face for dissimulation, and since we will probably be much in each other’s company and I don’t like “missishness”, let us dispense with the more ridiculous conventions.’

‘I am not miss-ish!’ I denied indignantly.

‘Agreed, so don’t try to appear so. Now, tell me, how do you really come to be in your unenviable position? Necessity?’

For a moment I debated how to meet this unexpected and sudden frankness, but the smile held no derision.

‘Dire,’ I said, and hung my head pathetically. ‘I am an orphan and penniless.’

‘Then you are exonerated,’ he chuckled. ‘I thought it might be lack of judgement, or a desire to improve your mind, or to see India.’

‘Oh, but I do—want to see India, I mean. Only we haven’t managed it so far.’

‘And how is that?’

‘Well, of course we have seen some of the country, but not what I would like to see.’

‘And what is that?’

‘Indian India, if I can put it like that. And the people themselves. I’d like to know more of them than we can do, living in cantonments and big towns. I’d like to see how they live, know what they believe in and think about; I’d like to be able to read their literature; learn about their history; look at their art; hear their music. Understand them, I suppose. Oh, I know, I know!’ But I would not look at him, realizing that his smile would now be one of long-suffering condescension, like the smiles of so many ‘old India hands’ whom I had encountered, and to whom I had unwisely unburdened myself. ‘I know that my naïveté is past believing. I know enough of things out here now to understand that I have small chance of coming closer to the country than we have done. As it is, I am even laughed at for my Urdu lessons; yet if I were to spend a year in France and neglect the chance to learn the language, my friends would think me criminally negligent, would they not?’

‘Indubitably. And so you take Urdu lessons, do you?’

‘Young
men
are expected to,’ I answered defensively, ‘but young women who do are considered peculiar.’

‘Exceedingly!’

I looked up, ready to fight, but found him regarding me seriously and with some interest.

‘You don’t laugh?’

‘Why should I? I wish there were more like you. A great many more like you! As it is our ladies—and somehow, though my eyes and experience both belie the fact, I get the impression that all white women in India must necessarily be “ladies”—since they have started coming out in large numbers, have helped to bring about this strange situation of isolation that you have noticed. Even when I was young, things were different. It was possible then for the two races to meet and mingle with mutual respect and enjoyment, as indeed it is today when men are pursuing men’s work.’

‘Why should the ladies’ presence so have influenced matters?’

‘Many reasons. Women are more attached to unimportant details. More dependent on the support of familiarity and accepted usage. They have brought their habits, customs and prejudices with them, instead of leaving them at home where they belong and have a place. They have, very largely, refused to bend, to accommodate themselves to the situation here—and they have made their menfolk do the same.’

‘I feel you impute too much to my sex. I cannot think we have so much influence.’

‘No? Well, look around you, Miss Hewitt! Look at all these charming creatures whirling round us in their silks and satins and … well, whatever else it is you ladies make your gowns of! Look at yourself, Miss Hewitt, in that mirror over there …’ He paused in the waltz and we stood swaying together, while I did as he said and glanced at our combined reflection in the long, gilt-framed glass. I found nothing to object to in the picture we made: he tall, immaculately dressed in black; I short (but not too short, I assured myself) and looking very nearly my best, with a flush of exercise in my cheeks, my eyes bright and my expression animated. Perhaps my partner caught the flash of self-approbation in my glance, for as he led me into the dance again and I looked up at him for enlightenment, there was more than a hint of mockery in his amber eyes, though he continued to smile.

‘Well—I have looked,’ I said coldly.

‘And I agree, we made a splendid picture.’ And he tightened his grip on my waist, threw back his head and laughed. I wanted to be annoyed; but it was not the sort of laugh one can hear without joining in, and, loath though I was to admit it, I had been a little obvious. So I laughed too.

‘But what was it you expected me to see?’ I asked, when the laughter had subsided.

‘See! Why, the extraordinary unsuitability of your apparel! Oh, not only you, Miss Hewitt; indeed, allow me to assure you in all seriousness that nothing could be more pleasing than the vision you make at the moment. But if you will try to see yourself, yourselves rather, for I do not wish to seem personal, in these great billows of skirt, with bared shoulders, arms and … er, feet unapparent to all but the clairvoyant, and then remember where you are.’

‘What difference can the fact that we are now in India make to the way we dress? English ladies dress the same the world over.’

‘Exactly, and devilish uncomfortable they are as a result! Here in India, a country of extreme heat and often unexpected cold, where one is ankle-deep in dust for three-quarters of the year and knee-deep in mud for the rest of it, the English lady retains her floor-length skirts and her dozen or so petticoats. She constricts her waist in whalebone, whatever the heat, and then cannot understand why she is prone to fainting attacks and even apoplexy. She bares her shoulders and arms to make a feast for every insect in reach, and then cannot understand why she suffers so frequently from the various fevers of the country. She makes absolutely no concession to changes in climate or activity or to her own necessary comfort, and yet still has the energy to weep over the countless head-stones in all our sad little cemeteries that provide ample evidence of the fact that the English lady can pretty well count on being dry bones by thirty if she remains in India!’

‘A gloomy picture indeed, sir.’

‘A just one.’

‘What would you have us do, apart from staying in England, that is?’ I enquired sweetly, with the phrases he had used earlier in the evening—‘white doll-faces’, ‘too many of ’em’, ‘emotion’ and ‘trouble’—very present in my mind.

‘Do? Why, adapt a little! Modify your mode of dress so that you can keep cool when it is hot and warm when it is cold. Why is that so impossible, after all? Deuced if I can see that the Indian female garb lacks attraction, grace or beauty—and it’s sensible and comfortable into the bargain. But can you pretend that our ladies would ever adopt it? No, of course not! In clothing, as in everything else, the English lady is restricted in her notion of what is acceptable and has managed to force those same restrictions on her men. And you say the female sex has no influence!’

‘You have almost persuaded me to the contrary opinion, Mr Erskine. However, I am still unwilling to believe that the lack of social intercourse, of friendliness and … and sharing of interests and experience which I notice is all the fault of us women.’