Zemindar (79 page)

‘Wally!’ I cried, shaking him by the arm to get his attention, so sunk was he in his own thoughts and fatigue. ‘Wally, do tell me? Is it all right? What’s happened? Is it really all over? Oh, Wally, we know nothing but surely we have not … capitulated?’

He stopped, shook the sweat out of his eyes and looked at me.

‘Eh? Laura? Capitulated? Good God, no! We licked ’em!’

‘We’ve won?’

‘Won? How can we? No, but we’ve beaten ’em off for the moment. Until the next time.’

‘They’ve drawn back then?’

‘Yes. Right back. There’ll be some quiet tonight, with any luck. We’re all right, Laura. All right.’

He shook away my hand with some impatience and moved away in hurried anticipation of his quarters and his brandy.

I turned back to the Gaol with tears of relief sliding down my sweaty face and, as I did so, caught sight of Charles coming towards me, with Ishmial behind him carrying their two guns. Even at a distance, I could see that Charles was hurt, and I hurried to him.

‘Don’t touch me, Laura,’ he implored as I reached out. ‘I’m not much hurt really, but don’t touch me.’ I had put out my arm to help him.

‘But what has happened? Where were you hit?’

‘My shoulders and upper back,’ he grated through clenched teeth. ‘Nothing much; a shell exploded some way behind me, and I have been peppered with spent shrapnel and muck. Just let me sit down for a while, and then you and Kate can have a look at it.’

‘Oh, Charles! I’ll run for a doctor, or Ishmial will, I’m sure!’

‘No need. Anyway, you won’t get one to come. Just let me have a rest and then you can get the damned stuff out yourselves.’

We sat him down gingerly on the box in the kitchen, and I made some fresh tea, extravagant in my use of leaves. When Charles had drunk his wordlessly and greedily, Kate cut away his shirt and examined his back.

‘Well, I’ve seen a lot worse than that in my time, m’lad. You were lucky not to have been nearer the big bang, were you not?’

‘I know. It killed two men; blew them to bits, I hear. But this is bad enough for the moment. If I hadn’t been standing in a bit of a trench, I wouldn’t be able to sit down this side of Christmas.’ And he tried to laugh as he laid himself face down on Kate’s bed.

‘Good. That’s the spirit. Now I want hot water, scissors and a darning needle. And open that window, Laura. I need all the light I can get. Light two candles and get Ishmial to hold them for me, and you, Laura, you had better get to work on something to eat. Even that ghastly stew of yours seems almost appetizing at the moment, and I’m sure the lads can do with something hot too. Now, out of my way, girl. Ishmial—here!’

Ishmial hastily finished his mug of tea, wiped his moustache with the back of his hand and took the lighted candles from me. I was relieved to be exempted from watching or helping with the operation and turned my attention to the bullock meat and lentils. For over an hour I was left alone to stir the unsavoury amalgam in the pot and think my oddly happy thoughts, which had immediately reverted to Oliver the moment I was alone. At the end of that period, Charles emerged, white but more comfortable, with his torso bandaged in strips of my only linen petticoat, and Kate behind him looking complacent and pleased with her handiwork.

Somehow Toddy-Bob, down at Gubbins’s battery, had learned of Charles’s injury, and just then appeared with a bottle of brandy hidden under his jacket and a screw of paper containing six sugar lumps concealed in his sun helmet. These offerings were accepted without demur or enquiry and, as I poured out a generous measure of the liquor for Charles, I blessed Toddy’s forethought in getting himself transferred to Mr Gubbins’s post. Toddy looked wistfully at the bottle as I placed it on the shelf, and Kate, following the direction of his eyes, smiled.

‘Oh, come now, Laura!’ she protested. ‘This has been a trying day for us all, and I think a dram would do me almost as much good as Charles. Surely you wouldn’t dream of sending Tod away without a heartener on such an occasion?’

So I took down the bottle again, and we each had a drink, while Charles, feeling better for the food and brandy, and with a hint of colour returned to his dirty cheeks, gave us an account of the day’s battle.

The mine directed at the Redan Battery, our largest, strongest and most important strongpoint, had been ill-laid and, instead of breaching our defences at the vital point, had exploded harmlessly, if alarmingly, much short of its objective. No doubt the pandies had been disappointed by the failure of the mine, but ready mustered for attack as they were, had hurled themselves into battle, flinging wave after wave of men against our walls while their guns opened a murderous cannonade into the entrenchment from their vantage points surrounding us.

‘I never thought I’d live to see the end of them,’ said Charles. ‘My rifle barrel got so hot, my palms are blistered … see! There was no end to the devils: they just came on and on and on. We’d beat them off at one point, only to see them bring up reinforcements at another; then the ones we’d beaten off would regroup, be joined by more, and attack again before we had time to wipe the sweat from our eyes. I swear I didn’t know there were so many blasted sepoys in all India! They fought splendidly too, and I’m damned if I can guess why they let us beat them off and win the day into the bargain. Around three o’clock, the firing began to taper off and soon afterwards the ceasefire was called. God knows why. There were still thousands of them milling around below us, though their ardour had certainly been dampened.’

‘They called for a truce, the bastards!’ Toddy said with satisfaction. ‘To remove their dead, like. There’s ’undreds of the beggars lyin’ in the muck outside, dead as mutton or gettin’ on that way. ’Orses too, and gun-bullocks and that. Thank Gawd they ’as the decency to want to bury and burn ’em all proper like. Think what the smell would be like if they didn’t!’

‘Oh, Tod!’ Kate remonstrated, but it was impossible not to smile at Toddy’s mixture of unction and common sense; the stench would indeed have been intolerable had the dead been allowed to rot at our walls.

‘Yes, ’undreds of ’em … and I’m not exaggeratin’ either, mind! You cast your blinkers over the parapet and you’ll see ’em bein’ taken away by the cartload. And shall I tell you how many we lost?’

I frowned discouragingly; I did not want to hear the numbers or names of our dead. It was sufficient to know that we few friends were still safe and together. But Toddy disregarded my glare.

‘We lost four whites killed and a dozen wounded, and maybe a dozen of our own ’eathens gone to their ’eathen ’Eaven. Four, mind you, just four!’

‘But how can you possibly know?’ queried Kate with scepticism. ‘Everything is still so confused, surely.’

‘Sure enough! But I been down in the ’ospital ’elpin’ to lay ’em out, like, mam. Makes it me business to know them as ’as gone on account of the auctions, like. No sense in losin’ time at the sale of a man who didn’t have nothin’ I might want. But when I gives a ’and to sewin’ them up, I gets a pretty fair idea of a party’s effects, if you follow me. Now tomorrow or the day after there’ll be pretty pickings, I reckon, on account of two of the gonners bein’ gentlemen, like.’

He accompanied his words with a satisfied smirk so droll that, in spite of the morbid matter of his discourse, we all laughed. The possessions of the dead were generally auctioned soon after burial, and, though at first the custom had been considered deplorable, now we were all used to bidding for the clothing, stores and little luxuries of our comrades and friends, there being no other way of supplying our own lack. As time went on and casualties grew heavier, it was quite common for a jacket or a pair of boots to change hands several times without ever being worn by their successive purchasers.

But, though our losses were so few on that day of the first assault, one of them at least was of the utmost importance to us. Cassandra, the goat.

When Toddy went into the courtyard to milk her, he found she had been blown to bits by the shell that had bombarded our doors with shrapnel. As he commented mournfully when he returned with the news, there was not even enough of her left to make a meal. Terrified by the initial explosion of the mine, then anxious to soothe Kate, and later lost in my new and private world of love, I had not given the animal a thought all day. If I had remembered it, I would certainly have brought her into the kitchen, for one odour more or less would have been more than worth the animal’s safety.

‘Oh, miss, miss!’ Toddy turned to me with something like agony on his strange features. ‘Oh, miss! And what’s goin’ to ’appen to the nipper now?’

He had realized sooner than we that the shell had killed Pearl as surely as it had killed the goat. Without the goat’s milk, she would die. There was nothing else on which we could feed a three-month-old infant.

The room was suddenly hushed. The mosquitoes whined and the fat blue flies buzzed contentedly as they explored our empty plates.

Charles laid his head on his arms folded on the table, and I sat down slowly, thinking of the dreadful days that must follow as the baby starved. I wished I was sufficiently Christian to ask God to give me strength to bear another’s suffering, but I was not. I did not pray; instead I railed against the Fate or Deity that could allow the agony of the innocent. ‘Let us all die!’ I raged silently to whatever power it is that has the arranging of such matters. ‘Let us all die! We know why we die and what has caused our death; perhaps we have even deserved to suffer. But this child has harmed no one. Let her not die so cruelly, so horribly. Oh, let her not die. Take me!’ I hardly knew what I said, nor to whom I was saying it. My ideas of religion were rudimentary, but not so elemental that they could countenance a vengeful and vindictive God, so I suppose it was the Devil with whom I attempted to bargain.

I shut my eyes and for a moment was overwhelmed. No sight I had seen until then, not Elvira Wilkins’s body swinging half-devoured in a starlit grove, not Emily’s swift unlovely dissolution, not the casualties carried past our door on bloody stretchers, had affected me as now I was affected by the figments of my own imagination: the tortures endured by a small child dying slowly of hunger, while her elders watched in helplessness. I felt physically ill with apprehension.

‘I won’t let it happen!’ I swore, clenching my fists till my fingernails bit into my palms. ‘I won’t let it happen!’ I must have spoken aloud without knowing it.

‘Sure and what can you do, woman dear?’ Kate asked hopelessly. ‘What can any of us do?’

She stood looking down at Pearl as she spoke. We had given the child the last of the morning’s milk, though it was ‘on the turn’, but it had not been enough to satisfy her and she beat the air with small balled fists and cried for more.

‘Surely … surely there must be other goats? In fact I know there are. We must find out who they belong to and ask for some of the milk. We can pay for it. They must let us have it if we pay for it?’

Toddy shook his head.

‘No go, miss. There’s too many other children needin’ it. I heard only yesterday that Mrs Inglis had turned away one of the gunner’s wives because ’er goats are givin’ only enough for ’er own nippers. Stands to reason! She feels about ’ers as we do about ours!’ Even in that moment of despair, I warmed to Tod’s possessive plural.

‘Cows then?’ I insisted. ‘There must be some cows somewhere.’

‘All dead or dry by now, miss.’

Nonplussed, I fell silent.

‘If … oh, if only we knew someone who could act as wet-nurse,’ Kate said, but without hope. ‘Perhaps … I suppose we could enquire. I suppose we might just find someone who would be willing to …’

‘Of course! That’s the answer! Why didn’t I think of it before?’ I jumped up.

‘Oh, don’t hope too soon, Laura dear,’ begged Kate. ‘We have no certainty of help in that direction. We might not find anyone.’

‘But we
have
, Kate, we
have
. Mrs MacGregor! She … she told me that she …’ And I stammered to a halt. Mrs MacGregor had said that she had more milk than a dozen old nannies, but just in time I realized that I could not report her verbatim in the present company.

‘Mrs MacGregor will help us. I feel sure of it. I’ll go over to the Resident’s House now and see her. It is still quite quiet and the sooner we can arrange it the better, even if it means that Pearl has to stay in the
tykhana
for a time. I know Mrs MacGregor is a good, safe, reliable woman. I just know it.’

I owned no bonnet, but I tied on the large sun hat I had bought after our arrival and tidied myself as much as was possible for my first ‘social’ call.

‘Heavens, girl, you can’t go alone. I’ll come with you,’ said Kate, but I pointed out that someone should stay with the querulous baby.

‘I’ll take you over, miss,’ volunteered Toddy. ‘Mr Flood ’ad better stay quiet for as long as ’e’s allowed.’

But Charles had got up and was waiting for me at the door.

‘Thanks, Tod,’ he said, ‘but she’s my daughter and it’s only right that I should make this small effort on her behalf.’

‘But your back; it must be very painful,’ I demurred.

‘It will do. Come along, Laura, don’t fuss!’ he replied, and the two of us set off.

The insurgents, still busy with their dead and wounded, spared us their fire, and the evening was almost disquietingly still.

For over three weeks I had not been more than half a dozen steps from the Gaol verandah, and what I observed around me as we walked to the Resident’s House that evening brought home to me more clearly than any words or detailed explanations the desperation of our position.

Every building was holed with shot and scarred by bullets and shrapnel. Walls had collapsed under the barrage and the rain; roofs had fallen in; porticoes stood precariously supported by half their complement of pillars; shutters hung crazily from smashed windows; balconies sloped at odd angles, and doors on upper storeys gaped open, leading into air.

We picked our way through mounds of rubble and shattered furniture, doors and window frames that had been carefully collected for fuel, edging around stinking puddles of greenish mud, and so chaotic was the destruction, so complete the transformation of the neat and orderly cluster of buildings I remembered, that had Charles not been with me, I would have been hard put to it to find the Resident’s House. As we moved through the debris, men, spent with the long day’s fighting, were already at work again, carting or carrying away the rubbish, the crumbling pillars, mounds of bricks and lumps of masonry, to be built into the breastworks damaged in the fighting. ‘We are even using files and books to stop up the gaps now,’ remarked Charles wryly as he helped a soldier to lift part of a mahogany sideboard on to a barrow.