Ryman, Rebecca (101 page)

With
even the weather hostile, Olivia became horribly dispirited. For all her
bravado, in retrospect her visit to Raventhorne's office was a wasted effort.
Perhaps he was right; she had
only made a fool of herself. Looking back, her
petty little verbal triumphs had been meaningless. They would add up to naught.
Raventhorne (as she herself had once assured him!) was a monolith hewn out of
rock. Toughened by the bufferings of his lifelong fate, he was impervious to
silly darts, unlikely to be even dented by her own childish little feints. Her
rash adventure had brought her nothing save even more humiliation from a man
she had recklessly challenged to turn adversary. Had he ever been anything
else, she wondered? She had once confessed to him, half in jest, that she would
hate to have him as an enemy—but that precisely was what she had dared him to
become! She had misjudged his vulnerability and, in her miscalculations, she
had exposed her own. He would hit even harder at Farrowsham and, thinking of
poor Willie and his justified apprehensions, she filled with shame. Still
sullen and horribly distressed, Willie had never questioned her about her
encounter in the Trident office. Nor, with pointed disapproval, had Arthur
Ransome. Both these omissions Olivia took to be what they were intended
as—tacit reproaches for her unseemly boldness. To make some reparation, at
least, she worked hard at launching the furniture project.

Never
one for wasting time once a deal was struck, Hal Lubbock was now satisfactorily
installed in Ransome's house. The huge property was again a hive of activity.
Hired draughtsmen already laboured over drawings of Chinese furniture at the
Templewood house, and the Ling boys with their father had set up a carpentry
workshop in the servants' quarters. Now wildly enthusiastic, Lubbock set about
milking the last drop that promised profit. If the whirlwind methods of his
partner made Ransome nervous and sometimes shocked his neat accountant's mind,
they also impressed him. "There ain't no flahs on yours truly, pard,"
Lubbock assured Ransome. "Ah promised yuh top dollah, and that's what ah
aim tuh delivah." Fascinated, Ransome nodded without having understood a
word.

Some
of Lubbock's wheelings and dealings positively scintillated with ingenuity.
Since furniture on board ships was sparse, passengers usually purchased cheap
movables for their long voyages to make do. Arrangements were generally made
through Company clerks, who earned handsome commissions as middlemen. Lubbock
struck private deals with these clerks whereby he would pay well if allowed to
supply the furniture, Chinese and exquisitely elegant, free to all passengers.
All they had to do was to relinquish the furniture on disembarkation in Europe
to Lubbock's
waiting agents. The risk of loss or damage promised to be more than compensated
for by the savings in packaging and freight.

"By
Jove, the chap's a genius!" Ransome was overwhelmed by the brilliance of the
simple scheme. "I must confess, much to my astonishment, his enthusiasm
puts new life in these old bones I considered dead."

That
the highly unlikely partnership was beginning to blossom brought great pleasure
to Olivia. Not even the prospect of sharing his Englishman's castle with the
brash Southerner seemed to faze Ransome anymore. All that remained for the
venture to start functioning was to procure a stock of suitable teak and
mahogany. Still no further offer had been received from Raventhorne for the
derelict
Daffodil!

"I
am inclined to let Hal start carving her up, Olivia. To wallow in
sentimentality is foolish. Indeed, I am at a loss to understand why you persist
in hoping that Jai will make another offer. Why should he?"

They
were seated in the Templewood garden over afternoon tea. The rambling,
oversized bungalow presented a dismal appearance. When Ransome shortly vacated
the two ground-floor rooms he occupied and moved into his erstwhile home with
Lubbock, these too would be locked and the furniture dust sheeted. In the
peeling yellow walls, shuttered windows stared blindly like sightless eyes. The
scarlet bougainvillea over the portico, with no one to prune it, ran wild; the
rose garden had long since withered. In the once immaculate flowerbeds where
butterflies feasted now there were only weeds. Only the orchid gave a brazen
splash of colour and still flourished untended, as if a living mockery mounted
only for Olivia's benefit. She hated the sight of it, had often wanted to tear
it down from its stubborn roots, but could never remember to do so when there
was the opportunity. It was well that Estelle, shrinking from memories that her
old home held for her, had finally decided to sell the bungalow, if some
intrepid buyer could be found. Even if John were ever transferred back to
duties at Fort William, Estelle would not be able to bear living here again.

"No."
Picking up the thread of their conversation, Olivia shook her head. "The
Daffodil
will remain as she is. Raventhorne
will
make another offer. I know
it." The tenacity of her conviction surprised her. So far, the bait she
had cast had not even been nibbled at. Her reason told her that Raventhorne
would not
budge; his pride would not allow him to. Yet, however strong her logic it was
her instinct that seemed determined to prevail.

The
tube of ash at the end of Ransome's cheroot quivered, then dropped onto the
white table-cloth. Carefully he brushed it onto his palm and discarded it on
the ground. "Why did you go to see Jai?" he asked with no warning. He
had not stirred the topic before. "Was it anything to do with the
Daffodil?"

"No."

"You
know that Jai is livid about the sale of my house to Lubbock?"

"Yes.
I daresay he is."

"And
about your own participation in the affair?"

"Yes."

Ransome
sighed. "My dear child, I am neither noble nor am I pleased to be a
martyr, but I have always recognised that Jai's vengeance against us is
inevitable, even justified. You, on the other hand, have no personal enmity
with the man. It disturbs me greatly that you choose to suffer on
our
behalf.
I wish you would not. He will harm Farrowsham further."

Olivia
shrugged. "Perhaps. But he can also be made to undo that harm." She
saw no reason to tell him it was no longer
his
battle!

"Made
to?"
He couldn't help a laugh. "No one has ever made Jai do what he has
determined not to, or undo what he already has done. On what premise do you
base your extraordinary assumption?"

Olivia
looked away, momentarily uncertain. "Not having a more rational
explanation for you at the moment, I can only put it down to a . . . hunch.
Trust me a while longer, Uncle Arthur. I promise I will clarify everything in
due course. In the meantime, let us not make any hasty decisions."

And
with that he had to be satisfied.

That
night, alone and armed with a lantern, Olivia went down into one of her
basement strong-rooms and unlocked a sizable tin trunk. From it she hauled
out—glad that Dr. Humphries was not there to rebuke her!—a large object wrapped
in gunny sacking and tied with rope. She undid the wrapping and laid the object
on the floor. Then, sitting on a stool and wiping away the fine mist of sweat
that covered her forehead, she examined the object with single-minded
closeness. She again took note of every detail, marvelling anew at its simple
beauty, the innocent grace of its lines, the spirit it seemed to embody of
something
earthy, something free and altogether natural.
Had
she been right in her
conjectures?
Was
she reading too much into the few words her cousin and
Ransome had let drop so casually?
Could
it be that she was depending
unduly on that "instinct" and had miscalculated badly?

But
then she remembered her final look at that shocked, stricken face as she had
left Jai Raventhorne's office, and her spirits started to revive again. No, she
was not wrong in her conjectures; the nerve end he had exposed in his confusion
was not a figment of her imagination. She was certain that Jai Raventhorne
would
make another bid for the
Daffodil!

It
was time to precipitate the issue.

"I
fear that I have been wrong in my hopes," Olivia remarked to Arthur
Ransome the next morning in his office. "It seems stupid to waste time
waiting for something that might never come. If you so wish, let Hal Lubbock
commence with the dismemberment of the ship."

If
Ransome was astonished at her sudden reversal, he was gentleman enough not to
show it. Neither did he indicate to her his increasing suspicions about her
motives. He felt he no longer had the competence to understand Olivia's curious
methods, but he had promised to trust her. What he found himself unable to
trust with gathering disquiet was the direction in which her strange
compulsions appeared to be driving her. He did not approve of it any more than
he could understand it. But, of course, he still asked no questions. Instead,
he quietly accepted her suggestion and issued the requisite order.

By
six o'clock the following morning, Lubbock's team of carpenters was ready to
start the massive task of taking apart the
Daffodil.
The abandoned ship
lay beached on an upper stretch of the Hooghly, a sadly decaying reminder of
the proud flagship she once was. Clad in dungarees and shirtless, Lubbock
supervised the operations with exasperated gestures, irritated barks and many
highly graphic expletives, which, fortunately, his workers failed to
understand. A small crowd had collected to watch, since free entertainment of
any sort was not to be scorned and the dismantling of a tea wagon didn't happen
every day. Despite the two watchmen Ransome had hired to prevent arrant vandalism,
much had already been pilfered from the vessel. Even now, a
cheeky gang of
urchins was having a field-day trying to snatch whatever was loose and salable,
and having their ears frequently boxed for their boldness. But for all her
diminished prestige, the
Daffodil
was made of stern stuff. She had been
built to withstand the cataclysmic typhoons of the South China Sea; the
punishment she received from the carpenters and their axes she accepted with
hardly a dent in her hide. Lubbock jumped around like an excited kangaroo,
swearing volubly at the slow progress but achieving little. The
Daffodil
groaned
and creaked and her timbers shivered, but even by noon not much headway had
been made.

Ransome
squatted on a nearby outcrop of rocks, huddled in studied silence. Some
distance away Olivia paced impatiently under the pleasantly cool shade of a
spreading banyan tree. Her face showed no anxiety but the suspense within her
was acute. Was she to be bitterly disappointed after all ...?

She
was not.

Shortly
after two o'clock in the afternoon, Ranjan Moitra was seen hurrying onto the
scene bearing a letter. It was addressed to Arthur Ransome and it was from his
Sarkar. It was brief and to the point and its tone was unmistakably offensive.
But the message it carried was clear enough: If dismemberment of the
Daffodil
could be halted, then Raventhorne was willing to negotiate better terms for
the vessel.

Ransome
and Moira stared at each other in absolute silence. It was difficult to say
which of the two was the more astonished.

News
of the eleventh-hour and totally inexplicable reprieve of the
Daffodil
swept
Calcutta like the bubonic plague. It was alleged that Kala Kanta had paid an
absurdly large price for the wreck—more gleeful grist for the gossip mills. If
there was considerable perplexity in town, there was also much jubilation among
the European community. Jai Raventhorne had publicly eaten crow! Why, it was
not important to know; it was the how—and how thoroughly!—that needed to be
remembered. Arthur Ransome was congratulated very soundly but also with
low-voiced caution; it was true that the bastard's wings had been clipped but
there was still plenty of beak and claw left to be considered.

Two
Europeans did not rejoice with the community. One of them was Willie Donaldson.
"Why should he pay anything at all for the god-rotting wreck, let alone a
small fortune? And that too after putting Ransome as close to the bankruptcy
courts as any man can get?"

Olivia
sat examining some bills of lading in which her aide, Bimal Babu, had pointed
out errors. "I'm afraid I have no idea, Mr. Donaldson. I'm as mystified as
everybody else."