Zemindar (69 page)

When night fell, Charles brought Wallace to us.

Charles had spent most of the day drilling with Toddy-Bob and the other volunteers under the eye of a sergeant of the 32nd, in the space in front of the Residency where once, so long ago, they had seen each other for the first time.

‘Hullo, hullo, hullo! How good it is to see you two dear ladies again!’ Wallace attempted to greet us with his old convivial heartiness and kissed us both with clumsy fervour; but, as I drew away from him and looked into his face, tears ran freely down his pale, sagging cheeks, and, abandoning his attempt at cheerfulness, he sat down suddenly on the stool, put his head in his hands and cried like a baby. Charles, embarrassed as men generally are by expressed grief, turned away and, with his shoulder against the door post, surveyed the night outside, while Emily and I looked at each other in wordless alarm. I had never seen a man in tears either, and could think of no way in which to meet the situation. It was Emily who, with a true instinct of sympathy, knelt down beside him and put an arm around his shuddering shoulders.

‘Poor Wally,’ she murmured. ‘Poor Wally. Don’t mind crying in front of us. We are your family and must share your grief, you know. We are here to help you in any way we can. Oh, Wally!’ And she leaned her head against the table, and wept along with him. I doubt whether she was weeping for Connie and little Johnny; more likely she wept not for them but for the manner of their death? Perhaps her tears were really for herself and Charles and Pearl who, quite unwittingly, were now involved, without understanding or blame, in a force that brought death and mutilation, sorrow and shame, destruction and despair to ordinary people—people with no pretentions to power, people without intentions of evil, people just like herself. I think she wept for the incomprehensibility of life. But whatever the reason for her tears, the very fact that she shed them helped Wallace to master his own emotion. He sat up and mopped his face with a well-worn handkerchief, then looked from my strained face to Charles’s back with a little shrug of self-depreciation.

‘Sorry for this exhibition,’ he apologized. ‘The shock, you know. Had no idea you were here; never thought Erskine would be affected by all this in Hassanganj as we have been … here. I knew ours wasn’t the only station that had been disturbed, but Hassanganj—well, one wouldn’t think a place like that could come to any harm. Still! Who would have thought that we … that Connie …’ He stopped, and the ready tears sprang to his protruberant eyes again; but he sniffed and squared his shoulders. Then he fumbled in the pocket of his jacket and produced a bottle of brandy which he set on the table before him.

‘A little something … to … to celebrate your safety, y’know. We are lucky enough to have a good supply of spirits down in the mess, and I felt we should, all of us, share a drop tonight. Come, Charles! I shall not give way again. Let us have some glasses, cups, anything we can drink out of. Laura, I expect you are the housekeeper here, as you used to be in Mariaon—where are the glasses?’

I looked at Charles for confirmation. He nodded to me silently, then came to the table and sat down on an upended packing case which made our fourth seat. I got down our tin cups, and Wallace, with a hand that trembled visibly, poured the brandy. Emily brought a dipper of water from the earthen jar in the corner of the room to add to the liquor, but Wallace waved it away from his own cup, and quaffed the contents with one gulp.

The wavering yellow light of the lantern fell on a face that, but for its pale eyes, was almost unrecognizable. Wallace had been a rotund man, with a ruddy complexion and a cheerful expression. Now his face had slipped away into folds of slack, putty-coloured flesh, his eyes were red-lidded and underscored with shadow; even his sandy moustache was no longer carefully waxed and curled, but drooped raggedly over slack, moist lips. His eyes were dazed and thoughtless, and put me vividly in mind of how Connie used to look by five in the afternoon.

‘Wallace.’ Charles broke the silence in which we had all been sipping the brandy. ‘Wallace, will it help you to tell us what happened? Sometimes to talk of a thing eases the pain a little. You know how fond we were of Connie and Johnny; you know we do not want to talk of her simply from curiosity. Can you tell us what happened?’

Charles’s voice, well-modulated and pleasant, was full of kindness. But Wallace, after looking up from his mug for an instant, shook his head, and poured himself another liberal measure from the bottle.

‘I … I don’t know. I don’t know what happened, and that’s the truth. If I did know, dreadful as it probably was, I think I could bear it better. But I wasn’t there, you see. I … I don’t know whether they burned the bungalow and then, then, killed Connie, or whether they got her first, or anything. If I could only be sure that Johnny—if I could only know that they had no time to realize what was coming to them, but …’

He shook his head again, passing a sweaty hand over his eyes.

‘You see, we were both called away, I and the police fellow, Jenkins, who lived in the next bungalow. There had been trouble in a village down the road the night before, and the
thanadar
sent for us to make a report. Some pandies had passed through, demanded food and, when they didn’t get it, had set fire to the native police station and one or two other buildings. We were away a couple of hours. On the way back, we smelt the smoke before we were in sight of the bungalows, and somehow we knew something was wrong. We rushed back … but it was all over. It must have been the same lot that had attacked the village we had visited. Must have been hanging around all night, and when they saw us ride off, decided to … well, the bungalows were blazing merrily. There were only the two families in the station. Mrs Jenkins and her two children had been killed on the verandah of the house—our house, that is. They had come across to keep Connie company while I was away. Knew Connie was nervous and didn’t like our black brethren at the best of times. The fire had reached them, but we knew it must be them because … because … we found Connie near the servants’ quarters, and Johnny a short distance away—in a bed of cannas. Orange cannas. His
ayah
—you remember Parbatti?—was still alive, but she died before she could tell us anything. And that was all. There were no troops in the station, just a few police. They helped us to bury … them, and then I decided to come back here. Jenkins was going to stay on, but I advised him to go to the police barracks in Hodipore. Perhaps he did, I don’t know. But there was nothing for me to do there. Records had all gone with my office; everything. Anyway, it was apparent that everything was falling apart, and I thought, I thought I would be more use here, than stuck away on my own in the
mofussil
.’

‘Oh, Wallace, how you must hate them!’ Emily clenched her hands round her mug so tightly that the knuckles showed white. ‘To kill children! What fiends!’

Wallace looked at her in mild surprise and shook his head.

‘No, Emily. I don’t hate them. I hate myself. It was my fault that Connie and Johnny were killed. All my fault!’ And, though he spoke without bitterness, it was with the deepest conviction.

‘Good God, Wallace, you mustn’t allow yourself to think like that,’ broke in Charles hurriedly, while Emily looked at Wallace in alarm. ‘You could not have prevented it even if you had been there. They would have killed you too without a thought. Don’t blame yourself, old man.’

Wallace shook his head again in a tired manner, looking directly at me.

‘I was to blame, nevertheless. Laura knows the truth of the matter.’ And, as I made to interrupt him, he held up his hand to silence me. ‘No, my dear, it’s of no use trying to hide things any more. I am not interested in what people say of me now.’ He turned to Charles. ‘Laura knows that the real reason we had to leave Lucknow was not because I had been transferred to do a difficult job, but because my colonel wanted me out of the way on account of my gambling and my debts! If I had not been such a confounded fool about cards and horses, and everything else one can gamble on, Connie would be on a boat now and halfway to England.’

‘I thought you were in difficulties that last few weeks before you left Lucknow. Wallace, why on earth didn’t you apply to me? I could have seen you over a rough patch.’

‘It was more than a patch, my dear chap; and I had lost more than Connie’s passage money and the wherewithal to set her up in a cottage in England. I shall be in debt for the rest of my life. Which is one more reason why I would so much sooner be dead.’

‘You are not just to yourself, Wallace,’ I said. ‘Why do you not also tell them that it was because of Connie that you gambled in the first place? Because you wanted to do so much more for her than your income allowed you to?’

‘Because I’m not sure any more that that is the truth, Laura. Oh, I thought so at the time. But I fooled myself over so many other things, perhaps I fooled myself over that too. Anyway, it was directly due to my debts that Colonel Hande rusticated me, so it was due to that that Connie and Johnny were killed. Shan’t fool myself on that point anyway! If I had had the sense to keep my money in my pocket, instead of piling it up on the baize night after night, we would not have had to leave Lucknow. At the worse, Connie and Johnny would have been brought in here with all the others, and, and … well, I didn’t have the sense!’ he ended bleakly.

There was nothing we could say to dissuade him in his reasoning, and it was a relief when, after another stiff drink, he got up to go.

‘I’ll be needing that,’ he said, as he got unsteadily to his feet, recorking the bottle and slipping it back into his pocket. ‘We’re to go out in the morning, I suppose you have heard? Sir Henry means to intercept a party of mutineers approaching from Cawnpore. Suppose he knows what he’s doing; but I wish we could be a little more certain of the black gentlemen who remain with us. Don’t like the temper of the Sikhs myself. Don’t like it a bit. Still, perhaps it will be the answer to my problem.’ And he smiled wryly as he wished us goodnight.

Emily hardly waited for him to descend the steps before turning to Charles with the question that was in all our minds.

‘Is it true, Charles? Is Sir Henry going out in the morning, and will you be going too?’

‘Good grief, no, girl! I won’t be going. I may be a volunteer, but I’m scarcely a soldier yet, you know. Thank heavens for it too, because my feet wouldn’t carry me as far as the gate!’

‘Oh, I’m so glad!’ Emily flopped down on a chair in relief. ‘It would be dreadful if you had to go out and we were left here on our own. I couldn’t bear it!’

‘Well, it won’t happen just yet. Not that this is going to be a serious affair. One account has it that there are several thousand mutineers on their way here to reinforce their brothers, and another that there are just a few hundred. I should imagine the latter estimate is the correct one, and I can’t think Sir Henry would risk the men he has to defend this place if he wasn’t sure that his losses would be negligible. I imagine he just wants to make an example—show them there is still fight in us. Nothing more.’

The entrenchment was astir very early the following morning. By six o’clock we had eaten our meagre breakfast, Charles and Toddy-Bob had gone to their respective posts, and Emily, Kate and I went hurriedly to a vantage point on the upper verandah of the Banqueting Hall, from where we could watch the departure of the troops. Even so early, the strength of the sun as we walked out of the Gaol gave warning of an unusually hot day.

Emily and I had never before witnessed such a sight, and it was with interest rather than alarm that we watched the mustering of the men. We still knew too little of war to be immune to the romantic enthusiasm engendered by bright uniforms, fine horses, great guns, and the stirring sound of bugles, of harnesses clinking accompaniment to the rolling drums, of incomprehensible shouted orders; so when Sir Henry Lawrence appeared on the steps of the Residency, we joined in the cheer with which his men greeted him.

‘Well, we’re off!’ George Barry paused to call to his wife as he led his horse into position. ‘A prayer for us all, my dears. It’s going to be a hard hot day, even if we never fire a gun, and I’ve just heard that the 32nd are going out without their breakfast.’

‘Poor lads, but why?’ Kate called back.

‘God knows,’ her husband answered as he swung into his saddle. ‘Some damn-fool mix up about the commissariat, I suppose, but there’s no time to right the matter now if we want to get this business over before mid-day.
Au revoir
!’ And with a salute he was gone.

The 32nd, every button of their scarlet jackets fastened, every pipe-clayed crossbelt snowy, were already marching down the slope and through the Baillie Guard. The guns followed, each drawn by its team of four horses, the lead horse ridden by one artilleryman, his comrades following their charge in close order; then ammunition wagons drawn by mules or bullocks; then the Sikh cavalry—tall men, full-bearded and blue-coated, on tall horses—followed by a group of mounted volunteers and the officers of mutinous regiments like George Barry, faithful men, dispirited because they had no troops to command. After these, through the gate lumbered an elephant drawing a huge howitzer, the only one we had, so Kate said. Then the staff and, among them somewhere, Sir Henry. More cavalry followed, and, at last, ominously, a few horsedrawn ambulances curtained in blood red.

The clear morning sun glinted cheerfully on scarlet jackets and white turbans, on the satiny flanks of well-kept horses, on the great, dull bulk of the elephant, and the great, dull barrel of the gun it hauled; on the blue coats of the Sikh
sowars
, and bright pennants fluttering in the morning air. Even when the tramp, rattle and creak of their passage had died to a far-off hum, the sun struck answering sparks from lance-tips and bayonets and the brass spikes on helmets, as the long, awkward line of men and beasts wound its way across the pleasant parks and wooded land towards the distant village of Chinhat.