Zemindar (35 page)

‘Out of reading matter?’ he enquired politely.

‘Absolutely—until the next time the papers come from Lucknow.’

‘Can you find nothing to suit you in the library?’

‘I have not felt free to use it. The door is always shut, except when I am having my Urdu lesson.’

‘Yes, I spend a lot of time there and prefer privacy when I am reading. But the door is not locked. You are perfectly at liberty to enter and help yourself to any volume that takes your interest. I hope you will do so.’

I lost no time in fulfilling his hope: picking up a lamp, I immediately made my way down the long corridor to the library. Thereafter I spent many happy hours browsing among the shelves, either alone or in the silent, unregarding presence of my host hunched over some book at his desk. I often thought with gratitude of the man (Old Adam, as his grandson irreverently called him) who, two days’ journey from the nearest city and nearly a thousand miles from a port, had built up this fine collection of works in four languages fifty years before. Here were the great Latin classics and the Greek; all my English favourites and a wealth of literature in French, laid in, I had no doubt, to allay the tedium for his adored Danielle.

Oliver himself had added to the collection, not only with more modern works in English and French, but with Persian poetry, history and drama. I used to sit in the long dim room, when all the servants had gone to their quarters and the great house stirred gently in the afternoon somnolence, and think of the man who had built it and formed this library as its heart. For of that I was sure. These books, though they were bound in fine half-calf and bore his monogram—the Greek AE—on their spines, had been acquired individually to read and ponder over with loving concentration. This was no selection bought in bulk from a bookseller—even a discerning one. No page remained uncut, no book but bore somewhere a neat marginal comment in a fine sloping hand, the hallmark of the previous century’s ‘writer’ in the East India Company. What an unusual person he must have been, combining the roles of man of action, visionary and scholar.

Across the hall the gunroom contained his collection of firearms: old, odd-looking flintlocks, blunderbusses, muskets and pistols, the walls decorated with spears, daggers and ancient unwieldy swords. The hall itself was darkened by a forest of horns and stuffed heads aglow with yellow glass eyes—trophies of the time when Old Adam had first cleared and planted his land: buffalo,
nilghai, gurul
, wild boar, and deer with long horns, short horns, straight horns and curly horns, while over the chest near the door hung the polished skull of his first working elephant, Begum. It was customary for visitors to stroke the big white skull when they entered, much as Papists, so I had been told, stroke the statue of Michelangelo’s
Pietà
in Rome.

Before the bow window of the library, in the position of honour as it were, stood Old Adam’s vast leather chair and, beside it, the ornate
hookah
or hubble-bubble he had been wont to smoke while sitting in it. I could imagine him, with the long hose of the pipe wound round his comfortable form, the silver mouthpiece between his lips, a liveried
hookah-burdwar
ready at his side to recharge the bowl with tobacco and rosewater, taking his ease in the evening of his days and reflecting (I hoped contentedly) on what he had accomplished. I was fond of Old Adam.

Our life was quiet and pleasant as day followed day and a mild sun set the shadows dancing languidly on the spreading lawns. Beyond the park bounds, the stir and murmur of the crowded village, and beyond that again the great plain of India, still mysterious, still scarcely known to me despite my curiosity and desire to know it. We had few callers; the distances were too great, the roads too bad and our neighbours too few. Occasionally a couple of planters or an official of some sort would stop at Hassanganj for the night on the way to Lucknow or back to some remote station. All were entertained with scrupulous courtesy—some of them indeed seemed in the habit of using the place as a posting stage—but were never pressed to lengthen their stay into a social visit. Our only excitement was the mail from England which Toddy-Bob conveyed back from Lucknow at irregular intervals.

And then, on a Sunday morning early in February, Mr Roberts arrived. He had come to Hassanganj to negotiate for the present season’s indigo, but we had not been informed of his impending arrival.

‘What a pleasure that my business with Mr Erskine should serve to bring our paths together again,’ he said, bowing over my hand in his staid way.

‘You are acquainted then?’ asked Oliver.

‘We are indeed,’ I answered. ‘Mr Roberts was most kind to me on the ship coming out. I count him a friend.’

‘Thank you, Miss Hewitt, and your presence on the voyage was one of its few pleasures for me.’

‘Indeed?’ said Oliver coolly, leading the way into the house.

I knew that Mr Roberts had never before visited Hassanganj and I saw his eyes turn wonderingly about him as he made his way through the rooms. He remained closeted with Oliver for most of the day, and our host must have approved of his method of doing business, for that night, instead of retiring to the library at ten o’clock as he usually did, he remained in the drawing-room until we went to bed, talking amicably with his guest, who was indeed such a sensible man that his conversation was always a pleasure. Charles and Emily were almost as pleased as I to see a familiar face, and we all indulged in reminiscences of the voyage and our companions. Mr Roberts told us that Major Wilkins, with his wife and Elvira, was now stationed at one of the newly instituted posts only about thirty miles from us. The Major was now a very great man indeed, so Mr Roberts said with a smile, and Mrs Wilkins’s purple had taken on a quite imperial lustre.

‘And do you remember a talk we once had, Mr Roberts?’ I said when there was a lull. ‘On the ship? You felt we were not wise to make a protracted stay in the Kingdom of Oudh in these unquiet times?’

‘I do,’ he nodded, smiling.

‘But now look around you and confess that we could not be more comfortable or better placed anywhere in India.’

‘Without doubt, Miss Hewitt,’ he agreed. ‘The amenities of Hassanganj are admired and envied throughout the country. But if you will forgive me pointing it out, it was the general state of unrest in the province that worried me on your account; I had no doubt that you would be entirely happy in Hassanganj itself.’

‘That’s true,’ I acknowledged, ‘I was only teasing. But surely the state of the country is peaceful enough to reassure you now?’

Mr Roberts fidgeted in his chair and looked briefly from Emily to Mr Erskine, who was regarding him intently over his cigar. Perhaps it was indicative that Mr Erskine smoked wherever and whenever he pleased, whether or not ladies were present.

‘I wish I could agree with you, Miss Hewitt,’ went on Mr Roberts. ‘But there have been one or two … well, incidents … recently that seem to me to point to a gathering storm; the latest being the burning of the telegraph office at Barrackpore last month. This itself was merely the result of another disquieting incident, but no doubt you have heard the story before. I know how swiftly news travels in the
mofussil
of India, so you may very likely know more of the matter than I do.’

‘You refer, I suppose, to this matter of the Enfield cartridge?’ Oliver spoke without surprise, though the rest of us had heard nothing of this or the burning of the telegraph house. No doubt it had been reported in the papers but, if so, not in such a manner as to cause us concern.

‘Yes. It is a matter which is causing uneasiness—in certain quarters, that is.’

‘And I can guess the quarters,’ added Oliver grimly.

‘What exactly happened?’ asked Charles.

‘Well, word has got around, apparently through a
lascar
working in the munitions factory at Dum-Dum, that the cartridges, a new type for the Enfield rifle, are greased with lard and cow’s fat, and, since the cap of the bullet requires to be torn off with the teeth, this would mean defilement to both Mohammedans and Hindus, the cow being sacred to the Hindu, and the Mohammedans regarding the pig as unclean.’

‘You are very explicitly informed, Mr Erskine,’ said Mr Roberts. ‘I must congratulate you.’

‘As you say, news travels fast in the
mofussil
,’ replied Oliver dourly, not liking the note of surprise in his guest’s voice. ‘So repercussions have already started?’ He rose and walked over to the fire, where he began to fiddle with one of the lustres on the mantle.

‘But,’ said Charles, ‘surely this is nothing more than a rumour, a device to cause trouble? There can be no truth in it. The authorities, after all, must have some knowledge of native customs and prejudices?’

‘One must hope so; though British history in India has not been marked by intelligence or insight!’ Oliver turned and gave his brother a long, cool look.

‘Yes, it may indeed be merely a device for causing trouble, Mr Flood, as you say. All the same, there are other matters cropping up almost daily that, to my mind, indicate a lack of confidence among the people, or more explicitly among the sepoys. As Miss Hewitt remembers, this is no new impression that I hold. I have, as you might say, been scenting trouble on the wind for some considerable time. Now I believe this new order requiring sepoys to go overseas has crystallized matters, and it seems to me the trouble is coming to a head. There are too many variations on the same theme—the theme that the British wish to break caste, to Christianize, to totally subjugate, to annihilate the native beliefs and customs. To us here in this room, all such rumours are ridiculous, laughable. But you know what the native is when he gets an idea in his head!’

‘Perhaps the real trouble lies in the fact that only when the native entertains a wrong idea are we interested in what is in his head,’ said Oliver.

‘And then of course, it is 1857.’

Everyone turned and looked at Kate, who had volunteered this seemingly irrelevant remark.

‘Indeed it is, Mrs Barry. Indeed it is!’ Mr Roberts nodded in mysterious agreement.

‘But what has that got to do with it?’ enquired Emily.

‘Have you ever heard of the Battle of Plassey?’ asked Oliver.

‘Well—no, I don’t think so. Should I have?’

‘Oh!’ I broke in. ‘Clive! I remember that much. My uncle required me to read Macaulay to improve my vocabulary as a girl!’

‘Quite. Clive. 1757. The natives hold a belief that British rule will end one hundred years after that battle, which, as I hope your mathematics have informed you, Emily, brings us to 1857. An interesting point perhaps, Mrs Barry.’

‘Good gracious! Do you mean there might be some sort of war?’ enquired Emily incredulously.

‘Insurrection, I believe, would be more correct as a term.’

‘Good gracious!’ she repeated. ‘Oh, Charles, perhaps it is just as well that we are to return home soon, after all.’

‘Oh, come now, Emily,’ returned her spouse impatiently. ‘There is no possibility of any sort of trouble that would concern Europeans. These people have been quarrelling among themselves for hundreds of years, and I expect they will continue to do so—but we have the Army and … and … there can be no cause for alarm on your part.’

‘I do hope so. Oh, I do hope you are right. I shouldn’t like to be cut off here with a war going on. We would just have to go home sooner.’

‘Nonsense, Emily. Out of the question.’

‘Your husband is right, Mrs Flood,’ soothed Mr Roberts tactfully. ‘There is no cause for you to be alarmed, whatever happens, and nowhere in India would you be safer than in Hassanganj.’

Emily allowed herself to be reassured, but I caught a glance laden with meaning pass between Mr Roberts and his host.

Mr Roberts stayed for a couple of days, and then rode off to some other indigo plantation. On the morning following his departure, Oliver and I rode out alone. Charles had overslept and Oliver Erskine waited for no man. I did not anticipate much pleasure from his unalloyed company as, lacking Charles’s usual service, I mounted from the block and cantered off after him, with Ishmial, Mr Erskine’s impressive Pathan retainer, close behind me. Often on these morning rides Mr Erskine was entirely silent, immersed in his own thoughts, and then I would line my mount with Charles’s and we would contrive, happily enough, to ignore our taciturn host. But this morning he was in an expansive mood.

‘I have something special to show you today,’ he smiled as I caught up with him. ‘A little bit of the “real India”. Something for you to write up in your journal,’ he added slyly, knowing that I did not like references to my schoolgirl habit of keeping a diary. I tried to write something in it each day, and also made small watercolour sketches and drawings which I pasted in to illustrate my entries. A little sketch book and a pencil always travelled in my pocket, and he had often seen me pause to catch a quick impression of morning light striking on an old wall, an unusual temple or a giant anthill rearing out of the earth like an antique castle.

‘Today is the official opening of spring—the day the Lord Krishna’s feet touched the earth and made it bloom. We call it
Basunta
in these parts. Do you see that bush, with the little yellow flower? That is the
basant
, the herald of spring, and yellow is the colour of spring. Wait a moment, you must wear some!’ He bent down to the bush from his saddle and plucked some of the flowers. They were like buttercups and had a sweet honeyed scent. I pinned them to the bodice of my habit, and Mr Erskine, in a moment of gaiety, thrust a single bloom into his lapel.

‘There now, we are both suitably attired!’ he exclaimed with satisfaction as we rode on, he very upright in his saddle, his left hand at his waist, the right loosely clasping the reins between lean brown fingers. ‘And,’ he went on, smiling, ‘since it is a fine morning, and springtime, let us try to forget the unfortunate absence of Charles and endeavour to promote some friendship between ourselves. Or at least—companionship. Is that too much to ask?’