Ryman, Rebecca (77 page)

The
passing away of his father, for whom he had little love, left Freddie
unimpressed. Over breakfast the next morning, his eyes blinked rapidly in an
effort to focus on the voluminous mail packet the messenger had brought from
his mother. Olivia's own letter from her mother-in-law had been warm, her
concern evident in her oft-repeated hope that Olivia's child had been born
safely. She
looked forward, she wrote, to receiving them both at Farrowsham with Freddie.

"Yes,"
Freddie muttered, trying to suppress a yawn, "I'd better leave right away.
Has Willie reserved passage aboard a vessel sailing soon?" If anything,
the prospect of a return to England cheered him considerably.

I'd
better
leave . . .? "I believe he has. The
Queen of Norway
sails on the
afternoon tide the day after tomorrow." Heavy with anticipation, Olivia's
heart skipped several beats but she made no other comment.

"Good."
He got up, yawned again and went in to bathe.

So
much now needed to be done, as Olivia set about preparing Freddie's trunks for
his long journey home, that there was little time to brood. Even so, her
thoughts and conjectures raced. Would Freddie want to take her with him? Should
she go if he did? Yes, oh God,
yes!
She had the second part of her
bargain to fulfil; it might not be legally binding but as a moral obligation it
was as shackling as an iron chain. Also, once in England only one ocean would
separate her from America.

For
the first time in months, Freddie was forced to attend to his office. Matters
concerning the plantation had to be given formal approval, legal papers had to
be signed, dispatches had to be prepared to carry to London. To see to more
mundane matters, Olivia remained at home, and read for the umpteenth time the
letter from her mother-in-law. Nowhere did Lady Birkhurst remind her of her
promise, but it was in the final sentences that her inviolate faith in Olivia's
honesty lay concealed. "I look forward immensely to your arrival (and that
of your child) at Farrowsham. You will be good for me in my grief, good for
Farrowsham and, most of all, good for my son. It is my hope, nay
conviction,
that you will never disappoint me."

On
the eve of his departure, Freddie returned home early from the office. For the
first time in weeks they sat down to dinner together, and for the first time in
weeks he was stone cold sober. Between them as they ate hung a pall of tensions
that could not be pierced by meaningless conversational shafts. Like a
caterpillar, Freddie had woven a cocoon around himself; he had excluded her
from himself and it pained Olivia deeply. How much Freddie had changed! That
the change had not been for the better, Olivia realised sadly, was a
consequence of her wretched circumstances, not his. Like her, Freddie also was
a victim, a bystander caught in the cross-fire of somebody else's war.

"I
will not be returning to India." The meal was over, the
staff dismissed
for the night. Both of them knew that whatever needed to be said could no
longer be postponed, for there was no more time.

"Yes."
Composed outwardly, Olivia sat with her hands clasped in her lap.

"Will
you join me in England later?"

Her
heart leapt but she remained cautious. "Would you want me to?"

"Yes,
I would want you to. You know that I love you. As my wife, your place will
always be at my side."

To
leave India, never again to face or fear Jai Raventhorne, to someday secure
Amos even more completely in Hawaii . . .! "My promise to leave you
whenever you wish still holds good, Freddie." She restrained soaring
optimism to stay practical.

"Whenever
I
wish? How neatly you throw the ball back into my court, my love!"
He smiled but he looked tired and ill and, as he spoke, did not meet her eyes.
Instinctively Olivia knew that there was more to come, much more. Even before
he said it, her heart had already heard what it was. "If you join me in England,
Olivia, then it must be ... alone." He stood up and walked away from her.

"Alone?"
she echoed, not surprised and yet stunned.

He
could not turn around to face her. "I know who your son reminds me
of." Well, it had come, as she had always known it would one day. In some
odd little way, it was to her a relief. Freddie whirled around, his face a mask
of horror. "How could you, Olivia, how could you! My God, the man's not
even
white!
The child you asked me to give my name to, the child you
expect me to rear as my own, is
one quarter native. . .!"
Suffocating
on his own passion, he started to splutter.

Within
Olivia something more withered and died. There was no longer any point in
denials. Engulfed in her dull despair, she did not even feel pain anymore. "I
cannot abandon my child, Freddie. You know that whatever he is, he is mine. You
might not be his father but I am his mother. What you ask of me is
impossible."

"Don't
I know that I am not his father!" he spat out, now furious.
"Raventhorne is.
Raventhorne
—a half-caste gutter-snipe bastard!
Holy mother of God—could you find no other man to open your legs to in this
entire cursed city? Was there no purebred Englishman left in Calcutta on whom
to bestow your generous favours?" Gripping her shoulders he shook her with
a savagery of which she could never have thought him capable. "Why,
you rotten
slut.
. .!"
Demented, he scarcely knew what he was doing as he pushed her
away so that she fell back onto the couch.

Wearily,
she lay back and made no effort to rise again. "For me Jai Raventhorne is
dead, Freddie," she intoned mechanically out of habit. "And if he is
not, then I pray that he soon will be. He no longer means anything to me."

But
crushed by his own misery, Freddie was beyond listening. With an anguished cry
he collapsed into a chair and noisy, dry sobs racked his body.
"Raventhorne possesses the only thing that I have ever wanted in my life.
Christ,
it's evil, malignant!" He was inconsolable. "I am not the man I
thought I was, Olivia. I beg you to release me from my promise. I am not
equipped to fulfil it. I do not have the moral strength, or the capacity to
forget. Forgive me, Olivia, forgive me . . ."

From
a distance, separated from him by a space too vast to negotiate, Olivia watched
his world crumble. They had all changed, or been changed, reduced to their
basic components like Humpty-Dumpty, impossible to put together again. She rose
to sit on the arm of his chair and stroke his neck, gently but with deadened
impersonality, as if he were only an acquaintance. "I release you, Freddie
dear, of course I do. You were good to me when I needed goodness most, I can
never forget that. Whatever happens, I will never think less of you. It is my
strength that lacks, not yours—my equipment that is inadequate. You see, my
dear," she said bitterly, "not one of us is the person we thought,
not one."

He
did not hear a word. Instead, he turned and grabbed both her hands. "I'll
find a good home for the boy, Olivia, decent foster parents. I promise he will
be well looked after, that he will lack nothing. You will be free to return
here to visit him whenever you wish, for as long as you wish. I swear it,
Olivia, you have my word!"

Sorrowfully
she shook her head. "I cannot do that, Freddie. Without Amos I would die.
He is my life, my reason for living. You are asking me to cut out my heart and
survive without it." Gritting her teeth, she made one final appeal,
thinking only of the vow to which she was shackled. "If you let me take
Amos with me, I promise he will never intrude in your life. You will not even
be aware that he
exists ..."

"He
exists in my mind,
here."
He tapped his forehead, laid his head
back and closed his eyes. "Excise him from my mind, erase my memory, drug
forever my consciousness, and I will
agree." The grim silence between
them filled suddenly with his laugh, a macabre rattle. "A bastard of a
bastard, a touch of the tar-brush, and heir apparent to the barony of
Farrowsham—Lord, what a joke!"

"Amos
will never be your heir! If you take us to England, I will give you a son of
your own, I swear it!" Recklessly, she lowered herself even further,
seeking escape, any escape.

He
shook his head. "Each time we lie together it will be with
his
bastard
in between, a reminder that someone has already poached my preserve, or is it
the other way around?" His disillusion was heart-breaking. "It is
more than my weak flesh can bear, dear heart. Don't ask me to perpetuate the
agony. I cannot."

"It
is my duty to provide you with an heir." Dull with failure, she spoke
without emotion. "You cannot marry again."

"I
would not wish to marry again. For me there can never be any woman but you,
Olivia."

Despite
her numbness, her eyes filled. "Bury the past, Freddie," she implored
one last time. "Raventhorne means nothing to me, even
less!"

"Then
give up his son."

He
waited for an answer. A seeming eternity passed without it coming. But then,
they both knew that it never would, for it had already been delivered. Freddie
rose, went to the door and opened it.

"I
have instructed Willie to provide you with anything, everything, that you might
need by way of funds. As for the Agency, the plantation and the other Indian
assets, you may utilise them with total freedom as you wish. Should you leave
Calcutta, my instructions remain. I am making lifelong provision for you
wherever you might choose to live. As for your son," a cloud flitted over
his face, "he will, of course, remain my financial responsibility
throughout his life. That obligation, at least, I am man enough to
honour."

"I
want nothing from you, Freddie, not a penny!"

He
did not even hear her. "I would have taken anyone else's child, Olivia,
anyone but a miscegene. I would like to make that clear." His shoulders
sagged again. "If ever you can find it in your heart to do so, forgive
me." He closed the door very softly behind him.

It
was the end of their life together. Such as it had been.

The
next morning, early, Willie Donaldson arrived to collect Freddie's baggage, all
neatly packed and labelled, standing in readiness in the hallway. Freddie
himself was not at home, having
gone out again last night without returning. At
noon, Donaldson came back to report that His Lordship had been found once more
on Armenian Street and had had to be carried aboard the
Queen of Norway,
which
was now away down the river towards the estuary. Unknown to Freddie, Olivia had
slipped a letter inside his portmanteau for his mother.
Dear Lady Birkhurst,
she had written formally,

It
is with regret I inform you that my debt of honour to your family is destined
to remain unrepaid. I have also failed to bring your son the salvation that you
had so generously expected, and I so unthinkingly promised ...

It
was not until much later that Olivia recalled another little irony. Now, it was
she
who was Lady Birkhurst.

There
was now nothing more to keep her in India. Thrusting aside her failures, Olivia
resolutely vowed to look only ahead. She had tried—God, how she had tried!—but
no one could fight so perverse a configuration of their stars and win. Her
fate, Freddie's fate and their combined limitations had all conspired against
them. But until now her life in India had been like that banyan tree forest
with serpentine tendrils transfixing her to the ground. Suddenly and
miraculously, she was free, at liberty to choose her own destiny. She could
return home whenever she pleased! Dazed by this unsolicited and undreamed-of
freedom, she was buoyant and light-hearted again, done once and for all with
regrets and remorse and guilt. All at once she saw Freddie's departure in an
entirely new light and with such relief that she could not help feeling almost
ashamed. Ruthlessly she brushed away the past; not even the shock of what she
had learned at her uncle's house that day disturbed her anymore. She no longer
cared. It was not her secret to worry over unduly; let those whose it was be
concerned!

Letting
only the bare minimum of a decent interval elapse, Olivia requested Willie
Donaldson to make arrangements for her passage to Hawaii.

In
the meantime news of Freddie's precipitous departure and the reason for it
brought the inevitable torrent of callers. Amusingly enough, the gentlemen all
came with sincere condolences, but the ladies, green eyed with envy, concealed
their chagrin beneath crocodile tears.

"What
a tragic loss, my dear Olivia!" Mrs. Smithers, once with high ambitions
for her Charlotte as the future Lady Birkhurst, could barely control her
vexation. "But then, we must look
on the bright side, mustn't we?
Some
body
has to die before a title can be passed down, mustn't they?"

"Oh
quite!" Mrs. Cleghorne, with similar aspirations for her Marie, agreed
heartily as she dabbed her eyes. "And how fortunate to be able to enjoy a
title while still so young! My sister-in-law was fifty before
her
father-in-law
even sneezed and fifty
-seven
when he actually died. My dear, they almost
landed in the poor-house by the time he deigned to breathe his last."