Ryman, Rebecca (92 page)

It
was not said as a reminder of his earlier lie, but he was again instantly
apologetic. "Yes. I did not tell you the whole truth then, Olivia, but
from what you hear now nothing has been omitted. Yes, it was Josh's staff that
gave her shelter and it was
through them that her story, or part of it, was
pieced together.

By
now Josh had only a hazy memory of the girl, but when it sharpened, he was
appalled. It was a Sunday morning, I recall. Both Bridget and Josh's mother
were at church. Nevertheless he panicked and came running for my assistance. Of
course I agreed immediately to house the girl in my servants' quarters, but
before the transfer could be effected, Bridget and his mother returned. The
girl's presence was hastily explained with the alibi that she was the younger
gardener's wife. Neither of the ladies was particularly interested. The lie was
accepted at face value and the girl's transfer to my house deferred. But then
that night, Josh's luck ran out further. Around midnight, amidst a fearful
monsoon storm, the girl was delivered of her son, Josh's son, with the dhobi's
wife and daughter acting as midwives. And with that deliverance, unknowingly
and innocently, the poor girl diverted the course of all our histories
forever."

He
stopped to pluck an orange from a fruit bowl resting between them and to peel
it with singular concentration. It was only after they had shared its juicy
segments in mutual silence that he again picked up his narrative.

"Imagine
the nymph, Olivia, that unfettered creature, imprisoned in a dark cell like a
butterfly pinned under glass. It was pathetic, dreadful—but she, poor child,
never had any thoughts of revenge against the man who had reduced her to this
abysmal situation. It was the gods themselves who decided to come to her aid
and rectify some of the imbalance in her young life without her intervention.
Her mixed-blood son was born nameless but bearing ample proof of his parentage
in his eyes. The connection was not difficult to make."

"Who
first made it, Aunt Bridget?" Olivia asked.

"Good
heavens, no! Almost fresh out of a convent school with a prim, proper
upbringing that taught her that even to
think
of sin was a sin, such a
prospect never even occurred to poor Bridget. But to Lady Templewood it did,
when she marched into the quarter to see the newborn, as she had done with
every new addition on the premises. She knew instantly and she was livid. With
no second thought, she commanded Josh to have mother and child removed immediately
from the house, before Bridget too could make the connection. But you know
something, Olivia?" Rubbing his chin as his memories jostled, Ransome
paused. "Josh refused. For the first time that I can recall, he openly
defied his mother. Finally, after much heated and surreptitious
debate, Josh
forced her to compromise. It was decided that they could stay, provided the
girl never allowed the child to stray out of the servants' compound."

Momentarily
Olivia was astonished. How could such an arrangement have been successful and
for so long? But then she recalled her own visit to the Templewood staff
quarters behind the kitchen house. There had been hordes of children about whom
she had neither seen nor whose existence she had even suspected. She remained
silent.

"The
night after Jai's birth, Josh and I stole into the quadrangle to have a look at
the infant he had so unfortunately sired. When he saw him, Josh was paralysed
with shock. Then he was so overcome with feeling that his eyes filled. He
realised that it was upon the face of his first-born, his son, that he gazed
and he was speechless with awe. He was still appalled, disgusted, at what he
had done, but at the same time he was fascinated, in some inexplicable way
almost
thrilled.
And you know something else, Olivia?" The energy
drained out of him and he seemed to wilt. "It has always been these two
diametrically opposite emotions, emotions one would consider mutually
exclusive, that have controlled Josh's relationship with his son since that
first time he held him in his arms. If the paradox puzzled me, it absolutely
bewildered Josh. That he should be horrified at having sunk low enough to have
spawned a half-caste bastard, Josh understood. It was the other half of the
paradox that confounded him, at times incensed him. To him it was a flaw in
himself, a weakness—and Josh despised sentimental weakness, human fallibility.
But that first night he was torn, utterly torn, and the illogicality in himself
defeated him."

"I
don't suppose Uncle Josh ever considered actually
acknowledging
the
relationship, did he?" This Olivia asked out of curiosity; she was now
deeply intrigued.

"Oh
no." Ransome's denial was categorical. "No. There was never any
question of that, never. Above all, Josh was fiercely jealous of his position
in society. His driving power was ambition, pure and simple. Oh, he took pride
in defying some minor social norms, but privately he retained a healthy respect
for public opinion. He could not risk public condemnation in a matter of such
grave moral laxity, and that too with a native woman. Hundreds of Englishmen
before and since have fathered bastards, many of them half castes, but for Josh
to invite open censure was tantamount to professional suicide. Besides, his was
a happy,
harmonious marriage. He had no wish to disturb it and invite more
trouble."

Olivia
stretched out her legs to make herself more comfortable. It was late, but she
felt not a hint of tiredness. "And through all those eight years Aunt
Bridget did not have even a glimpse of the boy?"

"Oh,
she probably did have glimpses, but then, as you know, poor Bridget always
despised native servants. She never had any interest in them as people, as
individuals. To her they were all the same, thieves, cheats and liars to be
suffered through necessity. Even if she did see the boy, she would have paid
him scant attention."

Without
realising it, Ransome spoke also of Lady Bridget in the past tense. It was a
small but significant lapse; it filled Olivia with melancholy—and with
reinforced resoluteness. The fulfilment of Jai Raventhorne's twisted destiny
might have destroyed others. She would not let it destroy either her or her
son!

"I
think I told you earlier that the boy had this irritating habit of staring. It
was, of course, at Josh that he used to stare, sometimes for hours, hiding in
the bushes outside his study. Occasionally, Josh exploded with temper, but
then, at other times, he tried to be kind and offered the boy sweets. Perhaps
out of nervousness, perhaps because he was naturally resentful, sullen, the boy
never responded. Once, when the boy ran away from Josh, he slipped and grazed
his knee. Not realising that I was watching, Josh took out his handkerchief,
brushed the graze, then tied the cloth round the injury with infinite gentleness.
When he suddenly spied me, he pushed the boy away and stalked off in a huff,
angry that I had caught him indulging that weakness he detested in himself. He
never admitted it, you see, never. Not even to me. Maybe not to himself
either."

"But
surely Raventhorne knew by the time he was eight that Uncle Josh was his
father?" It seemed strange to Olivia that a child so aware of so many
things would not.

"Only
God and Raventhorne know the answer to that. It is a possibility, certainly,
but I doubt it."

"Why?"
Olivia persisted. "Didn't his mother ever tell him? Or, perhaps, one of
the servants? Some of them must have at least suspected the truth."

Her
persistence seemed to disturb Ransome. He merely shook his head and said
nothing. Still wondering, Olivia let the subject lapse. It was past midnight
and the lamps burned
low. Olivia rose to summon Salim to replenish their fuel and to order two
glasses of hot milk and a plate of biscuits from the pantry. Then, avoiding the
question that had worried him, she asked Ransome another. "All right, I
accept that in those early years Uncle Josh did have some feelings, however
secret, for his son. But then, why the savage change of later years? Why the
bitter hatred?"

"Ah!"
Ransome exclaimed, raising a finger at her. "Ah—that was the essence,
Olivia, the essence." He puffed vigorously at his cheroot, coughed and
thumped his chest. He threw a rueful glance at the pile of stubs in the
ash-tray and shook his head in self-reproach. "If it doesn't make sense,
so much else in a mind divided against itself doesn't also, you know. Given a
basically insoluble dilemma, it develops aspects and facets continually in
collision with each other. So much so that in Josh's case, even Bridget became
uneasy. What suspicions were building up in her mind we will never know now,
but that night when she suddenly came face to face with the boy in the pantry,
in a flash of insight she
knew,
perhaps because inwardly she was
preparing for it. For her it was a shattering blow. Even more shattering was
the look on Josh's face as he raised his crop again and then stilled his
hand."

You
think I can ever forget what I saw in you that day?
In the still of
the night Lady Bridget's cry of despair rang in Olivia's ears with the clarity
of a bell. She could now guess the context of that cry but she waited for
Ransome to vocalise it.

Forgetting
his self-reproach of only a moment ago, he reached out for another cheroot and
lit it. "Josh recognised the boy, you see, and could not lash him again.
For a moment he could only stand and stare. It was only for a moment, but it
was enough for Bridget. The emotion in Josh's expression was fleeting, but it
was eloquent. And irreversible." He closed his eyes. "So much was
destroyed that night, Olivia, so much! If Jai's birth in his father's house
distorted our destinies, then this night in the pantry confirmed the
mutilations. Bridget might conceivably have, in time, forgiven Josh his
infidelity, the social crime of having lain with a native woman, the subsequent
shame of a half-caste bastard, even his deceit in harbouring them in her house
without her knowledge. What she could never forgive was his tacit, unguarded
admission—to her, in her piety and propriety, a shameless admission—of also
having
feelings
for the abomination of a half-caste bastard conceived in
sin. She was ravaged with jealousy, heart-broken, bitter and disillusioned. In
her sense
of betrayal, of defilement of her sacred marriage vows, she collapsed and
remained bed-ridden for months. Bridget never again lived without fear, nor
Josh without guilt towards her for his deceit. Many years later Raventhorne was
to return to her life. Mercifully, this was knowledge from which she was spared
at that time, but fear of his return some day remained her most persistent trauma."
Lifting the glass of forgotten and now cold milk from where Salim had placed it
silently, Ransome drank in noisy gulps, greedily, as if to slake an
unquenchable thirst.

"Bridget
was terrified that if Raventhorne returned, his presence would revive those
earlier emotions in her husband, that in his impetuosity Josh would be driven
to acknowledge him publicly as his son, that out of sheer vindictiveness, Jai
himself would talk. Because she was always a proud woman, Bridget bore her
cross with dignity, but within herself she never ceased to suffer. And then, of
course, Raventhorne did return." He levelled into a monotone. "The
rest you know. I need hardly repeat it. All I see now is that whatever the
reality, whatever the truth, however innocent Estelle may be, Bridget will not
receive her daughter again. Will she ever forgive Josh now that he is gone? I
don't know." He sat shaking his head, reliving his pain. "I don't
know. I've written to her, of course. Possibly, she will not reply. If she grieves
at all, she will do so quietly, secretly. If she doesn't, that too will be her
privilege, not unjustified. Josh did cheat her out of her rightful life,
Olivia. It was he who launched the irreversible chain of events, after all. It
was his obsessions, his hate, that brought the abhorrent word
incest
into
Bridget's chaste world—a word she would never have allowed in her mind, let
alone through her lips. As Jai had vowed when he was fourteen, he did take
everything away from them, especially the
other
family . . . oh! Did I
ever tell you about that or did I omit it?" He frowned, then nodded.
"Yes, of course I omitted it, but you shall have it now. Among everything
that Jai said he would take from Josh was 'your other family.' Those were the
three words he used, your
other
family. Recalling that Estelle had just
been born then, the event that took place eighteen years later assumes a
frightening significance, does it not?"

Olivia
sat motionless. Jai had already decided
then
to include Estelle somehow
in his plan of general destruction? Yes, there was something frightening about
such invidious planning. She shivered a little, then remembered that this very
arch plotter might one day be her own adversary—and she shivered again.

"You
asked me a question about Josh. I will now answer
it. Had Jai returned to Calcutta
with appropriate servility, with deference, begging assistance from a
benevolent father, Josh might have been magnanimous, his reactions to him might
have been different. But Jai did not return as a minion or an obsequious
mendicant. He returned as a
competitor,
a rival in the tea trade, a
challenger—this bastard son of his from the wrong side of the blanket who had
been born in his
servants'
quarters! I had never seen Josh as staggered,
as shocked, as outraged as he was on that day of Jai's impromptu visit to our
office to announce his return. Then came further effrontery, even more galling
than his visit. Jai's rise in the commercial world was meteoric. You must
appreciate, Olivia, that in our colonial society, alas, Eurasians are
considered the lowest on the social scale by both the Europeans and the
Indians. Raventhorne, however, traded shrewdly and successfully with both and
with equal facility. Perhaps because he was vociferous about his dislike of the
British, he earned the trust of the growing Indian merchant community. His
dealings with them paid rich dividends, which we could not match. And over the
years he made it such that the Europeans could not do without his clippers, his
warehouses and all the efficient benefits he provided."