Zemindar (29 page)

At once we began to settle our appearances, hampered by close quarters and the movement of the carriage. I patted my hair smooth and replaced my bonnet. As I raised my eyes, something on the skyline, glimpsed through the dusty window, caught my attention.

‘Those clouds on the horizon are remarkably still, aren’t they?’ I asked Kate. ‘They look almost solid.’

Kate glanced out of the window.

‘Clouds!’ she smiled, ‘Those are no clouds. The snows are out to greet us.’

‘The hills!’ I exclaimed, trying to clean the window with the palm of a dirty glove to see better.

As I looked the ethereal forms took on substance before my eyes. Streamers of pale cloud, low in the sky, shifted swiftly and for a moment allowed me a glimpse against the fading blue of the purple flanks of the foothills, crowned by the snowy serrations of the great peaks behind them, and at their feet a line of dark forest. Then the vision was gone again, leaving only the intermittent hint of icy pinnacles apparent in the shredding clouds.

‘The Himalayas!’

‘No less,’ Kate confirmed. ‘The
terai
—that forest at the base of the foothills—is only half-a-day’s ride from Hassanganj, but the snows themselves, of course, are a weary way from anywhere. We’ll have a great view of them all the same; better than if we were closer. Early morning and sunset, that’s when they appear, like haughty princesses out for a brief airing, then gone again, leaving only the memory of their shining splendour. Och, but they are a beautiful sight.’

I strained my eyes and willed the hills to reappear, but the ‘princesses’ would not relent and, as I settled back in my seat, I found we were passing through tall wrought-iron gates flanked by a small lodge and attended by two men dressed in the same livery as those who accompanied us. The house was approached by a long avenue of jarmin trees winding through what was obviously a large and splendidly maintained park. But for the downhanging tails of monkeys busy with the jarmin fruit and the eruption of a flight of screaming parrots from the trees, we could have been approaching a gentleman’s residence in any county of England. Deer nibbled the grass among the long evening shadows and peacocks dragged furled tails in haughty isolation as we bowled past groves, plantations and well-fenced paddocks. Then, rounding a corner, the avenue came to an end, and the house rose suddenly before us, visible in all its eccentric size across a wide expanse of grass.

‘Good heavens!’ exclaimed Charles, voicing my sentiments exactly.

‘What … what is it?’ wondered Emily, after a moment’s shocked silence.

‘Well may you ask!’ laughed Kate.

Sheer size was the first amazed impression. The place was vast. And then the bewildered eye moved from feature to feature, searching among the embellishments for the enlightenment of a plan. It found none. Turrets and cone-topped towers, castellations and battlements, lancet windows, arrow slits and mullioned casements, wrought-iron roof ridges and decorated gableends, flying buttresses and gargoyled gutters all jostled each other in energetic incongruity, obscuring any original design the edifice might once have boasted. Torrential rains, great heat and sudden frosts had weathered the pinkish stucco to an appearance of age, and the lower walls were covered thickly with climbing plants. The sinking sun touched the myriad windows and turned the panes to gold, and from a dozen decorated chimneys white woodsmoke unfurled into the evening air.

Enormous, eccentric, the unexpected appearance of this mansion in the middle of the Indian plain was electrifying, and Kate was still chuckling her appreciation of our astonishment as we drew up at last beneath a pillared portico. A small, fat native, his livery emblazoned with the Greek diphthong OE, as were those of our guards and the doors of the coach we had travelled in, sprang up as we halted and struck a mallet on a bronze gong hanging on a tripod in the portico. His warning, though a mark of courtesy, was unnecessary, for our host was already standing at the top of the steps leading on to the verandah, with behind him at least a dozen servants in the now-familiar livery.

‘A great man in his own acres,’ Mr Roberts had once said, and while I waited for the carriage steps to be put to the door I sat back quietly to observe Mr Erskine’s demeanour in his own domain. He stood with his hands behind his back and watched the preparations. Only when the steps were in position and the door open did he come forward to assist Emily. Then he was all that was most affable and welcoming, but that small moment of aloofness, while he waited for his myrmidons to set the scene, served once again to confirm me in my opinion of his arrogance.

Mr Erskine kissed Emily dutifully, Kate affectionately and bowed correctly over my hand. ‘You are very welcome, Miss Hewitt,’ he said, raising his head to meet my eyes. ‘India awaits your closer acquaintance.’ There was a gleam of humour in his eyes which did not leave me quite comfortable. But if he had not forgotten my chagrin in Major Cussens’s bungalow, it appeared that he had also remembered my aspirations at the ball. My smile was warmer than I had intended it to be.

Inside as out, we felt minimized by the size of the house. Beyond the glass doors, which stood open for our welcoming, stretched a wide corridor so long one could only guess it ended. But whereas the external aspect of the house suggested nothing so much as the fantasies of an opium-eater, its interior was fitted out with every indication of taste that wealth and a refined eye could provide. Rich hangings, fine old furniture, silken carpets, exquisite lamps all indicated an elegantly cultivated mind, although they were, for the most part, of a style that has become outmoded during the rule of our present Queen. The corridor, it is true, was hung with so many stuffed heads of wild beasts and mounted antlers that Emily gasped as she entered, and I, my attention caught by the bared fangs of a tiger’s snarl, was hardly aware of the white skull of an elephant that hung in the vestibule immediately above a carved chest of Chinese ebony. But in the morning room, where wine awaited the dusty travellers, an Aubusson carpet reflected the moulding of the ceiling, and the goblets from which we drank were of fine Venetian crystal.

So much I was able to take in during the few moments spent in conversation with our host before we were shown to our rooms.

In my bedroom, a large apartment on the first floor with doors leading on to an upper verandah, I found an
ayah
pouring a bath for me before a blazing log fire. Her name, she said, was Bhujni. She had one wall eye and was badly scarred by smallpox, but seemed a cheerful creature and was spotlessly clean. As she moved about the room, unpacking my dressing-case and arranging my few toilet articles on the dressing-table, many glass bangles jangled on her wrists and with every movement she exuded a pleasant smell of freshly starched muslin and the coconut-oil with which she glossed her hair to the appearance of satin.

A bullock-wagon laden with our trunks and bandboxes had left Lucknow a few days before. Now I found my gowns, all neatly pressed, hanging in the wardrobes, my linen freshly starched, and my lace laundered, gently bleached in sour milk, and then stiffened just sufficiently in sugar and water. Bhujni, beaming a black-toothed smile, was delighted by my appreciation of her efforts, but shocked when I put her out of the room while I took my bath. I allowed her to button up my gown, however, and help me with my hair. As soon as I was ready, I descended again, impatient to see more of the extraordinary mansion.

At the bottom of the broad staircase I hesitated, wondering which of the many doors would lead to the drawing-room, but almost immediately a servant appeared from nowhere on noiseless bare feet and opened the appropriate door.

The length of the room and the height of the ceiling only confirmed my first impression of the size of everything in Hassanganj. At each end of the room fires blazed, but only one of the three chandeliers was alight—that nearest to where I entered. I stood for a moment taking in the main features—the fine marble mantels, the long doors draped in velvet, the polished floor scattered with glowing Persian rugs—and was immediately attracted by two portraits, one of a man of middle age, the other of a young woman in a high-waisted gown of white muslin, which hung to either side of the mantel mirror.

I stepped nearer to examine them, guessing they must be the likenesses of Mr Erskine’s grandparents. I had a vivid recollection of the last time I had examined a portrait—in Calcutta—and looked to find in the masculine features before me now some hint of resemblance to that other. I was disappointed.

The elder Mr Erskine had been a man of middle height, stockily built and, by the time the portrait was painted, inclined to corpulence. His round face was ruddy with good health and no doubt good living. He was dressed in the fashion of the time, with a high stock, white cravat and frilled shirt. His eyes were dark and gleamed with humour as much as intelligence. I had the impression that he was rather uncomfortable in his silken waistcoat, and that the cocked eyebrow and wry smile were directed as much at himself as at the world in which he found himself. I knew at once that I would have liked him both for his character and for his company.

I crossed before the fire to look at the companion painting. How difficult it was to believe that anyone so young, so graceful, so beautiful, should live on and become a grandmother—perhaps arthritic, fat and cross, as grandmothers sometimes are. The girl could not have been more than eighteen at the time she sat for the portrait. She was all simplicity, purity and innocence, from the soft white folds of her gown to the short, artlessly perfect curls of her well-shaped head. The curls were of bright, dark gold and framed a face heart-shaped and delicate. Her eyes, too, were of bright, dark gold. Her grandson’s eyes.

‘Her name was Danielle. She was my grandmother.’

Mr Erskine’s voice came from immediately behind me, and I spun round alarmed.

‘I surprised you. I’m sorry. You were absorbed in the portrait.’

‘I … I thought I was alone,’ I said foolishly, made awkward by his presence.

‘I was as surprised to find you here. I understood that ladies’
toilettes
were protracted affairs. I came in to look around, see that everything is as it should be. It’s a long time since we have entertained ladies at Hassanganj. I hope that all is comfortable for you upstairs?’

‘Thank you—my bedroom is beautiful, but I wish you had not put yourself to the expense of employing an
ayah
on my behalf. I have not yet become used to such a luxury, and could easily have shared Emily’s.’

‘An
ayah
?’ I knew from his tone that he had had no hand in the matter, but he recovered himself in a second. ‘Oh, yes, well, don’t worry about that. My grandmother had a whole assortment of them, and I daresay they are delighted to have something to do again. They have lived on the estate, eating their heads off in idleness, ever since she died. They are married to other servants, you see, and one could not very well turn them away, could one?’

He moved away from me and took a brisk walk around the lighted portion of the room, examining everything as he passed. ‘Tell me,’ he said over his shoulder, ‘is anything lacking? Anything that you ladies are accustomed to and do not see here? Do you need more light for—well—er, needlework, that sort of thing?’

I had to laugh. ‘No indeed,’ I assured him. ‘It is a lovely room and a great deal more comfortable than anything we have been accustomed to in Lucknow.’

‘Ah, yes. The unfortunate Averys.’ He paused in his peregrination and faced me. The mention of the Averys had heightened my colour, and, knowing it, I raised my chin defiantly as I met Mr Erskine’s regard. ‘I would have helped, you know,’ he said unexpectedly, ‘if I had thought my help could do any good. But it wouldn’t. You must know that now.’ It was a statement more than a question, and before I could reply, his attention had again turned to the room. ‘I suppose it is all very old-fashioned now,’ he said, looking around him critically. ‘It is just as my grandmother left it. I never use it when I am on my own. I stick to the library and the dining-room. This place is too large for one man, so I ignore all but the rooms I need to use. I have not been in here for months.’

It was, as he said, old-fashioned, but the light, straight-legged tables, the fine bow-fronted chests, the simplicity of the chairs and sofas, the many long mirrors and, most of all, the absence of those bobble-trimmed velvet covers and cushions, bamboo what-nots, knick-knacks and china flowers which I had become accustomed to in Mount Bellew, gave the room an airy spaciousness well suited to the climate of the country. Ornaments there were, of course, what seemed to my ignorant eye to be a fine collection of Chinese porcelain and jade, but housed neatly in a succession of cabinets around the room.

‘It is a beautiful room,’ I repeated, and went on boldly, hoping to avert any further mention of Lucknow. ‘In fact, if you will forgive my saying so, all this magnificence—your house, your style of living—is so little what I expected to find so far from civilization, that I almost believe I am dreaming.’

‘Hmph!’ Mr Erskine glowered at me from under his heavy brows, and muttered more to himself than to me, though obviously I was meant to hear him, ‘So “civilization” is confined to the white nations.’ Then in a normal tone he went on, ‘It’s not unusual. Hassanganj is a modest place compared to some of the planters’ houses in Bengal, for instance. You know, the old “nabobs’ ” places? I expect you have heard of them.’

‘Are you a “nabob” then?’

‘Good heavens, no.’ He laughed. ‘I believe the race is extinct. But perhaps my grandfather was in his day. I have certainly never thought of him as such—but perhaps he was.’

‘It’s not only all this,’ I gestured at the chandeliers and the cabinets of jade, ‘that surprises me. But the house has a settled air, if I can put it like that, as though its inhabitants never intended to leave it. An atmosphere quite different to any of the other houses I have visited in India, and which were obviously only temporary homes, however comfortable. Your grandfather must have intended to spend his life here when he built it?’