Heat and Dust (19 page)

She went running towards him, and as they met on the stairs, she was not at all sure what she was going to say. Afterwards, thinking about it, it seemed to her that she had not intended to tell him about her pregnancy. But that is what she did. She had to tell him in a low voice and he could not react much as they were in the middle of the Palace with servants and followers on every landing and who knew what ladies lurking behind curtains.

After that it wouldn't have been fair not to tell Douglas as well, and she did so that same night.

Next day she was waiting for Douglas, and also for Major Minnies whom they had invited to dine; but at about eight o'clock Douglas sent a peon from the office to say they would both be late. Something had happened again though he did not say what. Olivia sat waiting on the verandah. She had been waiting all day – not for Douglas but for a message from the Palace. None came. She did not know what had happened: they were supposed to have left for Mussourie, but she could not believe that they would do so without seeing or communicating with her in some way first. She made up her mind that, if they had left, she would go too. She would tell Douglas that she could not stand the heat and must leave for the mountains immediately. Sitting there, alone and waiting in vain, she realised that it would not be possible for her to stay.

But when Douglas and their guest at last came, she did her best to overcome her disturbed state of mind and play the role expected of her. She sat at the dining table between white candles – her dress was white too, white lace – and chatted to them about a champagne party on the Cam she and Marcia had once attended where one of the boats had overturned. All the time she felt the two men to be as tense and disturbed as herself. When she left them to their brandy and cigars, she could hear them speaking together in worried tones; and when they came to join her on the front verandah, both were grave. She pleaded “Won't you tell me what happened?”

They did so reluctantly (Major Minnies said it was a pity to spoil their mood). Of course the Nawab was involved again. His gang of dacoits, instead of confining themselves to the territories around Khatm, had strayed into the province under Mr. Crawford's jurisdiction. They had raided a
village some five miles out of Satipur and had got away with cash and jewellery. No one had been killed but several villagers, who had tried to conceal their valuables, had been roughly handled. One woman had had her nose cut off. As soon as the villagers' report reached Satipur, Mr. Crawford and Douglas had informed Major Minnies who had at once driven over to the Palace. The Nawab had refused to receive him.

Olivia said “But they've gone to Mussourie.” She added carefully “Harry told me. I saw him yesterday.”

“They were to have gone but the usual thing happened: the Begum changed her mind,” Major Minnies said. “I don't know what it was this time – I think someone heard an owl which is of course very inauspicious before a journey – so they all had to unpack again.”

Olivia laughed – ostensibly at the superstition. She was gay with relief; they were still there, they had not left.

Major Minnies said “I wasn't altogether surprised when he wouldn't see me: because unfortunately we had had rather a lively scene just yesterday. He got . . . quite excited.”

“Dashed impudence,” Douglas said with heat. “I hope Simla isn't going to dilly-dally any further with him.”

“No, it rather looks as if they won't. The wheels of Simla grind slowly but they grind exceedingly small. I'm afraid it was putting my case to him in these terms that got him so worked up.”

“Did that surprise you?” Olivia asked.

She felt Major Minnies look at her across the dark verandah. His cigar glowed as he pulled at it. He answered her calmly: “No.”

It was Douglas who was not calm: “It's time he was taught
a lesson.”

“You talk as if he's a schoolboy!” cried Olivia.

Major Minnies, fair and judicious, seemed to be intervening between them. “In some ways,” he said, “he is a fine man. He has some fine qualities – and if only these were combined with a little self-restraint, self-discipline . . .” Again Olivia felt his eyes on her in the dark; he said “But somehow I admire him. And I think you do too.”

She said “Yes.”

He nodded. “You're right. No,” he said, as Douglas began to protest, “we must be fair. He is a strong, forceful character, and perhaps given other circumstances – I've thought about him a great deal,” he said and now seemed to be addressing only Olivia. “As you know, I've had dealings with him over several years and we have, I can't deny, had a lot of trouble with him.”

“And of what sort!” said Douglas, unable to hold back. “He is a menace to himself, to us, and to the wretched inhabitants of his wretched little state. The worst type of ruler – the worst type of Indian – you can have.”

“Perhaps you're right; no doubt you're right” said Major Minnies. He was silent and thoughtful for a long time; at last he said, slowly, as one making a confession: “Sometimes I feel that I'm not quite the right kind of person to be in India. Mary and I have spoken about it. Not that I would, at any stage of my career, have contemplated changing my job, this place – never, not for anything!” he said with an access of passion that surprised Olivia. “But I do realise that in many ways I step over too far.”

“Into what?” asked Olivia.

“The other dimension.” He smiled, perhaps not wanting to sound too serious. “I think I've allowed myself to get too
fascinated. Take the Nawab: I can't deny that he does fascinate me – as I'm sure,” he told Olivia, “he does you.”

“Oh gosh darling,” Douglas laughed,” does he?”

“Well,” said Olivia, laughing back, “he
is
a fascinating man . . . And terrifically handsome.”

“Really?” Douglas asked, as if he had never seen him in that light.

“Oh absolutely,” said the Major. “He is – a prince. No other word for him. The trouble is that his state is unfortunately not quite princely enough to satisfy either his ambition or indeed his need for money.”

Douglas was amused: “So he has to take to armed robbery to make up for it?”

“I also think he's tremendously bored,” the Major said. “He's a man who needs action – a large arena . . . I can always tell when he's feeling particularly frustrated because then he starts talking about his ancestor, Amanullah Khan.”

“That brigand,” said Douglas.

“Was he?” Olivia asked the Major.

“An adventurer – at a time of adventurers. That's what our Friend wants: adventure. He is not really the type to sit in a palace all day, or he would like not to be. But that's all there is for him, and moreover all he's ever known.”

“All he can do,” Douglas said.

“I used to know his father,” the Major told Olivia. “What a character. A great penchant for the nautch girls – till he went to Europe and discovered chorus girls. He brought several back with him, and one of them stayed for years. She was in that room where he is now, what's his name.”

“Harry?”

“As a matter of fact, the old Nawab died in there. He had a stroke while he was with her . . . He was a great connoisseur
of Urdu poetry. Every year there was a symposium at Khatm to which all the best poets came from all over India. The old Nawab wasn't a bad poet himself – he was always making up couplets – wait, let me see if I remember . . .”

After a moment he began to recite in mellifluous Urdu: it sounded very beautiful. Olivia looked up at the sky, furrowed with wavelets of monsoon clouds, and the moon slowly sailing there. She followed her own thoughts.

“Are these dew drops on the rose or are they tears? Moon, your silver light turns all to pearls,” the Major translated. He apologised: “Doesn't sound like much in English, I'm afraid.”

“No it never does,” Douglas agreed. In the dark he took Olivia's hand and held it in his own. The Major went on reciting in Urdu. His voice was loud and sonorous, and under cover of it Douglas whispered to his wife “Are you all right?” She smiled at him and he pressed her hand. “Happy?” he asked, and when she smiled again, he lifted her hand to his lips. The Major didn't see, he was looking up at the sky and reciting in Urdu; his voice was full of emotion – a sort of mixture of reverence and nostalgia. And afterwards he sighed: “It gets you,” he said. “It really does.”

“Doesn't it,” Olivia agreed politely. But she did not feel moved, either by the poetry or by his emotion. They did not, she felt, add up to much. She remembered what he had said – about going over too far – and it made her scornful. What did he know about that? If he thought that the nostalgic feelings engendered by a little poetry recited on a moonlit night was going too far! She laughed out loud at his presumption, and Douglas thought it was with happiness which made him very happy too.

“Did you know that the old Nawab died in this room?” Olivia asked Harry.

Harry said “What else do you know?”

“Oh there was some chorus girl . . .”

He burst out laughing, then told her the rest of the story. After the old Nawab's death, the Begum had not permitted the girl to leave the Palace without first surrendering all the valuables the Nawab had given her. The girl – a tough little character from Yorkshire, Harry said – had tried to hold on to some of them, but there she had reckoned without the Begum. One day – actually, Harry said, it was the middle of the night – the girl had turned up in Satipur with nothing but the clothes she stood up in (which happened to be a satin nightie and a Japanese kimono). She had been in a terrible state and claimed that the Begum had tried to poison her. The Collector and his wife, not entirely sceptical of her story, had done their best to calm her, promising to send her to Bombay and arrange for her to leave on the next boat home. But when they offered to send to the Palace for her clothes and other possessions, she became hysterical and begged them not to. She told them some tale she had heard about poisoned wedding garments that had been sent to an unwanted bride in the family: no sooner had the unfortunate victim put on the cloth-of-gold bodice than it clung to her, penetrating her with its deadly ointments. The girl swore that she knew this to be actual fact because the old Nawab himself had told her; also that all attempts to save the bride had been in vain and she had died writhing in agony. The old woman responsible for preparing the fatal garment was still alive and living in the Palace at Khatm. She lived a very pampered life in the purdah quarters where she was kept to pass on her art to others. “Oh you don't know what goes on in
there,” the girl said with a shudder. No one could talk her out of her fears, and although the Begum had of her own accord sent her suitcases after her, the girl refused to touch them but had left for Bombay wearing an odd assortment of clothes lent to her by the English ladies of Satipur.

Olivia smiled when she heard this story: “She must have been crazy. Those poor old things in the purdah quarters.” She asked, casually, “Do they know about me?”

“Know what about you?” Harry answered.

Olivia hardly ever thought about the purdah ladies. Sometimes it seemed to her that the curtains up in the galleries were moving, but she did not look up. The Nawab never spoke to her about his mother. Olivia realised that the Begum belonged to a different part of his life, perhaps to a more inner chamber of his heart: and this made Olivia proud and stubborn so that she did not want to speak to him about his mother, or to acknowledge her existence.

But she found the Nawab more tender towards her than she had ever known him. He sent for her every day and made no secret in the Palace of the relations between them. He even began to take her into his own bedroom where she had not been before. She followed him wherever he called her and did whatever he wanted. She too made no secret of anything. She remembered how Harry had once told her “You don't say no to a person like him” and found it to be true.

The Nawab was delighted with Olivia's pregnancy. He often stroked her slender hips, her small flat unmarked abdomen and asked her “Really you will do this for me?” It seemed to strike him with wonder. “You are not afraid? Oh how brave you are!” His surprise made her laugh.

He never for a moment doubted that the child was his. The question simply did not arise for him so that Olivia – for
whom it arose constantly – did not even dare to mention it. He became possessive about her, and every evening, when it was time for the car to take her back, he did his best to delay her, even begging her to stay with him longer. She hated it when he did that, and then it would be she who would plead with him to let her go. And he said “All right, go” but was so downcast that every time it became more difficult for her. Yet she had no choice. She dreaded the hour when it would be time for her to leave and he would say “No. Stay.”

Once he said “No. Stay with me. Stay always.” Then he said “It has to be, very soon now. You have to be here.” He was very positive.

She knew that if she asked “And Douglas?” he would answer her with a dismissive gesture: because as far as he was concerned Douglas had already been dismissed.

One Sunday an English chaplain came from Ambala and held a service in the little church. Afterwards Olivia and Douglas lingered behind in the churchyard; they had not visited it since that day they had quarrelled there. It was very different now. Although the sun was still hot, the trees were no longer dusty but damp and dripping green. Showers of rain had also washed the dust off the graves so that the lettering stood out clearer now and tufts of green sprouted from the cracks in the stone.

Douglas, striding between the graves, read out the by now familiar inscriptions. He was so engrossed that he went too quickly for Olivia and she had to call out to him. He looked back and saw her come towards him in her pale mauve dress with flounced skirt and matching parasol. He hurried towards her and embraced her right there among the graves. They walked on together arm in arm. He told her about all
these young men buried here, and then about other young men, his own ancestors, lying in graveyards in other parts of India. “Great chaps,” he called them. There was Edward Rivers who had been one of Henry Lawrence's band of young administrators in the Punjab; John Rivers, a famous pig-sticker, killed in a fall from his horse at Meerut; and a namesake, an earlier Douglas Rivers who had died in the Mutiny. He had been present at the storming of the Kashmere Gate in which the Hero of Delhi, John Nicholson, also fell. Douglas' ancestor died of his wounds just a day after Nicholson and was buried very near him in the Nicholson cemetery at Delhi. The way Douglas said that made Olivia tease him: “You sound as if you envy him.”