Ryman, Rebecca (30 page)

"She'd
have!
Have you ever seen anyone so besotted with food?"

"Yes,"
Olivia teased, "you."

Estelle
ignored the barb. From beneath the oily slick of face cream, her eyes glinted
like those of a fox on the scent of a choice prey. "I hear that his
clipper docks tomorrow night, the one that's been outfitted with a coal engine.
Won't Papa be livid!"

Poker
faced, Olivia gave no hint of the quick leap of her pulse. "Really? How do
you know?"

"From
Charlotte's cousin who works in the Customs office. He told her and she told me
this morning in Whiteaways while you were buying your sandals. Imagine! The
Ganga
could do the Calcutta-London run in
thirty days!
No wonder
everyone's in such high dudgeon. He threatens to wipe out all the
opposition." But since her interest in the trials of the business
community was minimal, Estelle soon returned to more personal worries. Throwing
herself back on her pillow, she glared petulantly at the ceiling. "I'd
give anything,
anything,
to be in London in thirty days! Marie says she
changed her hair colour twice in three months and nobody in London batted an
eyelash. God, I'm so
sick
of this same old face in the mirror every day!
And compared to what Susan brought back with her, I have to dress in rags, I
swear!"

Olivia
laughed. "Well, it's the only face you have, sugar, and when it's not
sulking it's really quite pretty, even without hybrid hair. As for your
clothes, if you call them rags then the rest of us lesser mortals have to make
do with sackcloth!"

Estelle
refused to be comforted. "It's all very well for you," she grumbled.
"You'll
have London round the corner when you marry Freddie—"

"I'm
not
going
to marry Freddie!" Olivia assured her waspishly.
"And I simply won't have you spreading such a wicked canard!"

"Why
ever not?" Estelle demanded. "Because of that Greg?"

"Because
of
no
one. I just am not, so there." Grabbing her hairbrush and
tucking it under an arm, she flounced out of the room extremely annoyed with
her cousin. But even more annoying than Estelle's loose tongue was the grisly
prospect of having to tolerate Freddie's tedious company on her ride the very
next morning.

"I
say, I'm looking forward so frightfully to these jolly old trips with you every
day, Olivia." Even at five o'clock in the morning, Freddie could barely
control his enthusiasm. "Where to, dear lady—the Tolly for
breakfast?"

In
the unflattering grey pre-dawn light, Freddie looked dreadful. His face was
haggard and putty colored, the eyes shot with red. He was trying desperately
not to yawn. Olivia almost melted, but didn't. On the one hand it was hardly
the poor man's fault that he ruined so totally her day's greatest pleasure; on
the other hand didn't he have enough sensitivity to see that he was not wanted?

"I
usually cover about five miles every morning," she said heartlessly as
they trotted side by side down Chowringhee Road. She sat defiantly astride,
rather than side-saddle, as she always did, much to the displeasure of her
aunt. "The idea is exercise and exploration rather than a social outing.
Today I had planned to visit the fish market near Kidderpore."

Freddie
paled further. "The fish market? Oh, I say Miss O'Rourke, er, Olivia . . .
isn't that rather . . . extreme?"

"No,
I don't think so," she replied very firmly. "I'd like to see the
morning haul. Some of the fish brought in are quite exotic, I'm told, such as
sharks and barracuda and giant turtles."

"But
these native bazaars are diseased places, Olivia, filthy and smelly and with
overflowing drains. And those hordes of naked brats with runny noses ...,"
he shuddered, starting to look quite sick.

His
alarm was so acute that, resentfully, Olivia relented. "Oh, very well
then, shall we take the horse ferry and explore the Botanical Gardens instead?
I hear that the banyan tree forest is quite astonishing."

He
almost collapsed in relief. Taking note of his mottled complexion, tired eyes
pouched heavily with signs of high living, and the stooped shoulders that put
years on him, Olivia could not but feel some sympathy for someone so bent on
reaching an early grave. Inwardly, however, she reinforced her resolve; no
matter how genuinely she felt for his poor mother, there was no compensation
large enough to make her ludicrous proposition even remotely acceptable, even
remotely.

They
cantered past St. John's Church, said to be a replica of London's St.
Martin-in-the-Fields, along the Great Tank in front of Writers' Building, and
past John Company's headquarters and focal point of Calcutta's cosmopolitan
mercantile world. The nucleus of the three obscure villages of Sutanuti,
Kalikata and Govindpur, which Job Charnock, a Company agent, had selected in
1690 as a place for "quiet trade," had indeed mushroomed into an
imposing, architecturally elegant centre of commerce and politics. They rode
through Clive Street, where Sir Joshua and, ironically, also Jai Raventhorne
had their offices. The Trident building, gaunt and grey and defiantly
unadorned, stood silent in the early morning, its windows shut and only the
cold metal emblem above its front door identifying it for what it was. With the
triumphant return of the
Ganga,
the first private steamship in the
country, there would no doubt be plenty of activity later. All at once Olivia
felt strangely exhilarated. By the time they arrived at Old Fort Ghat past the
New Wharf, her resentment against Freddie had subsided to the extent that she
could actually smile at his trivial conversation.

The
crossing on the ferry to Sibpur on the West Bank of the Hooghly opposite Garden
Reach was very pleasant and did not take long. With their arrival at the
Botanical Gardens, Olivia's mood became almost cheerful. The gardens themselves
were quite splendid, with many stretches of apple green water covered with
gigantic water-lilies, a special South American species now named after Queen
Victoria. Founded in 1786, the gardens had as their prize display a massive
banyan forest more than twelve
hundred feet in circumference and soaring to
eighty-eight feet at its highest, every tree in it sprouting from tendrils
dropped from one central trunk. Wandering through the unique forest, listening
to Freddie's chatter, Olivia realised with some surprise that he was far more
entertaining a companion than she had anticipated. For one, he was a lively
raconteur with an endless fund of stories about his escapades in London and at
Oxford, and about his father, with whom, she gathered, he enjoyed a rather less
than cordial relationship. He was, however, devoted to his mother despite his
nervousness about her. "She's a bit of a dragoness, I know, but the Mater
can be remarkably understanding," he confided. "It's the old boy
who's the stickler, rather a dried-up prune, really. He genuinely believes that
God created the world so that England could have its House of bloody
Lords."

Olivia
laughed. Indeed, the flavour of their conversation was so light-hearted that
she loosened her defences. The stories Freddie told were mostly against
himself. He said not a single cruel word about anyone; in fact, there seemed to
be no malice in his heart. But Olivia's relief was to be short lived. It was as
they were recovering their breath after a vigorous gallop and had dismounted in
a clearing to rest that Freddie suddenly said, "There is something,
Olivia, that I must say to you . . ."

Instantly
she congealed. "Oh, please don't, Mr. Birkhurst," she exclaimed in
alarm, knowing what was coming, "I . . . I'd rather you didn't!"

Whatever
little chin he had firmed. "I have to, Olivia, I
have
to get it off
my damned chest or I'll just
explode!"
He looked so desperately
unhappy that she didn't have the heart to protest further. At least he was
unaware of her conversation with his mother, which was some small mercy.
"I know that I'm not much of a ... man. I suppose I really am what
everyone says, a fool..." He gulped like a fish and looked at his feet.
"I know I'm not worthy of ... of a single, ah,
hair
of your head, Olivia,
because you're beautiful and clever and so ... so
p-perfect
that I,
well, I feel even m-more of a . . . a . . ." He choked with the effort of
untangling the knot of words in his throat and coughed at some length.
"D-dash it, what I'm trying to say and m-mucking it up as usual is,"
he cleared his throat noisily to remove the croak from it, his heart in his
eyes, ". . . is—will you,
would
you possibly by some bloody
miracle, c-consider becoming my... my w-wife...?" Exhausted, he collapsed
weakly onto a fallen tree trunk, almost convulsing with the effort of regaining
his breath.

Olivia
was riven with pity, with embarrassment. Hot faced,
she sat silent
for a moment not knowing with what words to wound least this hapless young man
whom she found she did not entirely dislike. He seemed so defenceless somehow,
so vulnerable, so utterly without physical strength, that she shrank at dashing
his pathetic hopes with a single blow, as honour demanded. But, as it happened,
while she stared at the ground hunting for suitable words and phrases, it was
Freddie himself who came to her rescue.

"Don't
say anything now, Olivia. I... I'd rather you didn't." His chest heaved
with emotion. "If you refuse me out of hand I'll just be sh-shattered. Let
me live in hope at least until we return from that blasted plantation. It will
give me time to harden myself against what I fear is inevitable
disappointment."

She
sagged with relief at the reprieve, ashamed at her cowardice but grasping the
device with both hands. Her eyes, however, softened. Poor, poor Freddie!
"All right, but on one condition."

"Anything,
anything!"

"That
you will not breathe a word of your proposal to anyone, especially not to your
mother and my aunt."

His
hand shot out with alacrity. "Done. My lips are sealed. It will remain
between you and me until . . . until you give me your answer. But in the
meantime," he looked down at his feet, shuffled them and blushed, "I
too have a condition."

"What?"
Olivia asked in renewed alarm.

"Would
you,
could
you, perhaps, force yourself into calling me F-Freddie?"

Olivia
laughed and quickly took the hand he held out. "Agreed. As we say back
home, it's a deal."

Freddie
took out his handkerchief and dabbed his forehead. "My God, it's a relief
to have got that over with! I was sure I would . . ." He stopped and
listened, his hand still.

Their
peaceful privacy was being broken by the staccato sound of approaching hooves.
The forest, not far from a British military encampment, was a favourite riding
ground for cavalrymen, but this galloping horse seemed headed straight in their
direction. Tendrils of mist hung from the trees in wraith-like formations
undisturbed by the still-dormant river breezes and in the cool early morning
the grass verges were jewelled with dew. A few moments later a rider burst into
the clearing, reined his horse abruptly and slid to the ground before them. He
was Indian, barefoot but dressed smartly in native garb with a yellow turban
swathed around his head. As they stared at him in vague
surprise, he
bowed and, approaching Olivia, handed her a white envelope. She took it
wonderingly and noticed, with a twinge of unease, that stamped on the back flap
of the sealed envelope was the name Templewood and Ransome. Worried, she tore
it open and quickly read the note contained within.
Sir Joshua requests Miss
O'Rourke's presence immediately aboard the Daffodil. The bearer will act as
escort.
That was all.

Olivia's
hand flew to her throat in alarm. "Is my uncle ill?" she asked,
handing the letter to Freddie. The rider merely shook his head; it was obvious
he did not speak English. Freddie read the note, replaced it within the
envelope and spoke a few words in halting Hindustani, but he was unable to
elicit more information from the youth, who merely kept shaking his head.

"I
think I had better go, Freddie. It must be a matter of some urgency for my
uncle to have summoned me like this, especially on board his ship."

"Of
course." His face fell. "Perhaps I should come as well?" he
asked hopefully. "I could be of some assistance in a crisis."