The Distant Kingdom Read online

  They discovered immediately that the rain had brought down the ceiling of their dining room. The house was in an uproar, with the khalasses carrying silver and furniture out into the hall, workmen yelling like monkeys on the mud roof as they tried to repair the damage, and the old butler trying to control them all, apologize to the lord-sahib and call the lady-sahib’s ayah all in the same breath.

  Perdita could only laugh. Marcus looked worried and said he thought she must be overwrought and should lie down.

  ‘I am not hysterical, Marcus dear. Not quite at any rate. Well, we certainly won’t be able to have guests to dine tonight. Will you send a chit to Mr Byrd, while I get these wet clothes off and see what can be done?’

  She went away, returning a short time later to take charge, calming the khitmagar, organizing the khalasses and asking Charlie’s ayah if he had been much upset by the commotion. Marcus had not known how much progress she had made with her Hindustani and was almost as impressed with that as with her newly acquired decisiveness.

  ‘After that horrid shock this afternoon, I had expected you would be prostrate, not organizing the household like this.’

  ‘Well, someone had to,’ she answered, surprised at his questioning anything so obvious. ‘If we had left the servants to themselves, they would have been running around in circles for half the night.’

  ‘You continually surprise me, Perdita.’

  Chapter Eleven

  The rains continued almost without ceasing until the end of August, quite putting an end to the entertaining of early summer. There was usually half an hour’s pause before dinner each day, and then Marcus and Perdita would join the rest of the Simla residents on their ponies for a quick canter, revelling in the fresher air and the glorious sight of the mountains freed for a moment or two from their burden of cloud and silvery pink in the setting sun.

  In spite of the dreadful weather, Perdita never failed to visit Aneila, even though she often became disagreeably soaked on the drive. She and Doctor Drummond had both hoped that the cooler temperature brought by the rains would have given his patient some relief, but it was not so. During August her face and hands became thinner than ever until the bones around her eyes showed starkly through the skin and gave her once-lovely face a monkey look.

  Edward had written both to her and to Perdita telling them that he was trying to get away from Lahore, but it seemed that Runjeet had taken a liking to him and invented pretext after pretext for keeping him, and he could not jeopardize the alliance by offending the old ruler. But he wrote encouragingly whenever he could, and tried to calm Perdita’s fears about what would happen. By the end of August she had almost forgotten that there was to be a war as it became obvious that Aneila was fading fast. She wrote to Edward to tell him of what seemed like a race between approaching death and the birth of the child.

  In the end, the child, a fragile tiny girl, was born alive on 1 October, the day when the Governor General made public his plans to invade Afghanistan.

  Perdita had just heard Marcus reading out the first paragraph of Lord Auckland’s manifesto when Doctor Drummond called to give her the news, and to tell her that Mrs Whitney was as comfortable as could be expected. She wanted to leave at once, but as Marcus pointed out she could hardly have reached the house before dark, and there was no reason for such haste. She recognized the sense of what he said, and when the doctor had left sat down again and tried to concentrate on what he read to her:

  The Right Hon the Governor General of India having, with the concurrence of the Supreme Council, directed they assemblage of a British force for service across the Indus, his Lordship deems it proper to publish the following exposition of the reasons which have led to this important measure.

  But Perdita’s mind was too taken up with thoughts of Aneila and her child to understand half of what Marcus read. By the following morning all she could remember of the Governor General’s reasons for going to war were: that the Dost Mohammed Khan had made an unprovoked attack on Runjeet Singh; that he was actively engaged in promoting Persia’s designs, which were wholly at variance with its alliance with Great Britain; and that the Governor General had decided to reconcile the differences of all parties by escorting some other Afghan chief to Caubul to reign in the Dost’s stead.

  It made little sense to Perdita, and when she arrived at Aneila’s house, the sight of her almost transparent face put it right out of her mind. Aneila’s eyes glittered with a sinister brilliance, but the hollows beneath them were like dark pits, and in her thin hands the veins seemed almost like ropes.

  Perdita sat down by her bed, trying to keep up a confident smile as she talked quietly to her stepmother, but her lips trembled once too often. Aneila saw her distress, and said:

  ‘You must not be sad, Perdita, it is Karma.’

  ‘How can I not? So many people need you, and you…’ For a minute or two she could not continue, and turned her face away from those sunken eyes that saw so much.

  ‘You do not need me, Perdita. You are stronger than you know. And Edward will be sorry, but he will be all right. My sons are men now and so it is only my little daughter who needs me. Will you take her?’ Through her tears, Perdita said:

  ‘Of course I shall, and I shall try to teach her to be like you: forgiving, loving and brave.’ She would have said more, but a dreadful paroxysm of coughing shook Aneila and left her too exhausted to talk.

  Doctor Drummond came again in the afternoon, and told Perdita that she should not be there.

  ‘It can be only a few hours now, and you can do nothing to help. You have your child and your husband to care for.’

  ‘I must stay, Doctor Drummond.’

  ‘Have you ever seen anyone die? It is not a pretty sight.’

  ‘My own mother. I know what to expect.’

  ‘But not of consumption? No? Then you cannot know. This is not an easy death or a silent one. As Mrs Whitney becomes progressively weaker she will be unable to cough, and as the fluid collects in her throat she will begin to drown.’ He saw the horror in Perdita’s eyes and said, ‘I am sorry to be brutal, but it is as well that you should be prepared.’

  ‘I shall stay, nevertheless. How could I leave her alone now with only servants?’

  ‘She won’t be alone. I shall be here.’ Perdita felt deeply grateful to the man who, in spite of being in the train of the Governor General himself, was prepared to watch at the deathbed of an Indian woman despised by almost all the Europeans who were his other patients.

  They returned to the bedroom and sat on either side of the huge, white-curtained bed as the sun drained out of the sky.

  Aneila’s was indeed a horrifying end, and Perdita ached to do something, anything, to relieve the labouring figure who lay propped up on the lace-edged pillows struggling to breathe through the blood and mucus in her throat. At one moment, Perdita could not bear to sit doing nothing and stood over her to help her up, hoping to ease the breathing, but Aneila gasped:

  ‘Don’t. Your breath is like ice on my skin.’

  Perdita went sadly back to her chair to watch. Aneila’s hair had been cut short to relieve the fever, and Perdita thought she had never seen a sadder sight than Aneila’s face, beaky now and pale as any English woman’s, lying with the feathery streaks of black hair across it. Her eyes were open and conscious throughout the sixteen hours she took to die. The sound of her terrible breathing was echoed by the sad cries of her child, who had been whisked out of the sickroom the instant of her birth and was being cared for by the servants.

  Eventually, just as dawn was breaking, pale gold over the mountains outside the window, Perdita saw the figure on the pillows relax, and for one blessed moment thought she was asleep.

  Doctor Drummond waited for a moment, and then came round the bed to lift Perdita from her chair. Her knees buckled, but he held her firm and took her out of the room and called for her carriage.

  ‘There is nothing you can do here now, Lady Beaminster. I shall arrange everything,
and you must get home.’

  She seized his hand and said:

  ‘But I must take the child. I promised her I would look after the child.’

  ‘Not now. She will be adequately cared for by the servants here, and I do not think Lord Beaminster would be … I believe you should consult him first.’

  ‘Doctor Drummond, that baby is my sister. I cannot leave her in a house like this with only servants. Unless you believe that she could communicate the disease to my son, I must take her with me.’

  It would have been easy for him to have lied, but his powerful integrity would not allow him so easy a way out of the dilemma, and so he said:

  ‘I can see no signs in the child of the disease and there is no reason to believe that she could take it to your household. But I must counsel you to think very carefully before you take her.’

  ‘I have thought of little else all night. My father cannot take care of her, and Mrs Whitney was estranged from her own family. There is only I. My husband will understand.’

  In the face of her determination, there was nothing for the doctor to do but acquiesce, although he felt sure that Lord Beaminster would find a way to repudiate the child. What serving officer in India could afford to allow a half-caste child, and as good as illegitimate at that, in his son’s nursery?

  But Marcus was not like other officers in the Company’s service. He had all his mother’s disdain for the opinions of the mob, and although he had, and voiced, certain reservations about allowing the child to be brought up with his son, when Perdita said: ‘We have to. She has no one else, and without Aneila, Charlie and I would probably be dead,’ he could only agree. He had done her too much damage to deny her that.

  Lady Beaminster’s latest eccentricity passed almost unnoticed in the excitement over the Simla Manifesto, as it came to be called, and the news that came down from Herat. By 7 October, the English were alight with chauvinistic pleasure to hear that the Persians were in retreat from Afghanistan, fought off entirely because of the bravery of a young English soldier, a Lieutenant Pottinger, who had happened to be in Herat and had organized its defence. (In fact the men who had sent him there secretly were also quite pleased with the way he had carried out their instructions.)

  To Perdita the news of the Persians’defeat seemed to remove much of the justification for the Simla Manifesto and Lord Auckland’s proposed invasion of Afghanistan. But she had learned not to speak of such things, and she listened in dissenting silence to the fiery excitement of those around her.

  At one of the last parties before his lordship’s departure for Ferozepore in the Punjab, where he and Runjeet Singh were to review their armies, she danced once more with Mr Colvin, who said to her:

  ‘It is a golden opportunity, Lady Beaminster. If we press on as we have been doing, we shall have a footing across the Indus and in Central Asia which will consolidate our power in India for another century.’

  ‘I can understand that, Mr Colvin, but is there not some risk? Sending all those men into a hostile country, I mean?’

  ‘You must not worry over such things. We are not going to conquer, merely to restore to the thrones of Caubul and Candahar a previously deposed monarch, who happens to be better disposed towards us than the Dost. All will be well. But I should not be boring you with such subjects. I hope you will sing for us once more, before we go.’

  Later his request was echoed by many others, and Perdita yielded to them. Her heart was too full of mourning for Aneila (which she could not show conventionally) and fear for the future to sing the cheerful songs they preferred, and so she chose ‘The Last Rose of Summer’, a plaintive lament that Juliana had recently sent her in a parcel of books.

  As always she sang to Marcus, who was standing in a group of gentlemen beside the fireplace, but it was of the man at his side she was thinking as she sang the last verse:

  So, soon may I follow

  When friendships decay,

  And from love’s shining circle

  The gems drop away!

  When true hearts lie withered

  And fond ones are flown,

  Oh who would inhabit

  This bleak world alone?

  As her voice died into silence on the last note, her eyes looked across the room directly into Charles Byrd’s, and at last she understood. All the companionship of the last five months, all the happiness and interest and warmth had sprung from her dealings with Charles Byrd. To her utter dismay, she knew then that she loved him.

  His own eyes widened in recognition, and a smile of complete intimacy illuminated his face for a moment or two. Mrs Colvin, walking forward to thank the singer, came between them, and Perdita tried to pull herself together.

  A little later she saw him strolling casually towards her. Still rocking from the shock, she evaded him, and soon persuaded Marcus to take her home. He thought she looked worried and said:

  ‘I had not heard that song before. It is beautiful, but so sad.’

  ‘I know. Juliana sent it to me, and I could not have sung a cheerful song tonight.’ She turned to him and impulsively put her hands on his. ‘Marcus, I wish you had not to go to this war.’

  He made an effort to leave his hand where it lay under his wife’s, and said as gently as he could:

  ‘I can understand that, but you must not worry too much. It is for this that I became a soldier; and we shall be back very soon. I know you will be lonely here, but I expect Whitney will return soon now, and it is not as though you will be alone. All the wives of his lordship’s staff will be staying here when we march, and I imagine Mrs Fletcher and … and the others will stay too: there would be little point in their returning to the Station when the regiment marches north.’

  Perdita withdrew her hand and said:

  ‘Yes, I know. I did not mean to fuss. And there will be no loneliness with little Charlie and Aneila.’

  The apology she had felt obliged to make emphasized the difference between her dealings with Marcus and with Charles Byrd. With Mr Byrd she never felt the need to excuse or explain anything she said; she knew that he understood her. She valued his good opinion, but she had never felt that she needed to perform tricks to win it. When she was with Marcus she always found herself trying to anticipate his moods and his reactions to what she did or said, and yet she never felt she really knew him. Charles Byrd knew her, and she him.

  Unaware that most women spent their lives trying to feel as she felt for Charles Byrd, she tried to banish the thought. Marcus was her husband and whether or not he was faithful to her, she could not but feel that her love for Charles was the extreme of disloyalty. Suddenly she wanted to do something for Marcus to make up for it, but all she could think of was to press herself more than ever into the background of his life during the few days before he was expecting to leave.

  Had she been able to read his mind, she would have known of his gratitude for her restraint; but she could not.

  She tried also to keep out of Charles Byrd’s way, afraid that he would guess what had happened to her if they talked. But it was inevitable that they would meet in so small a town. They encountered each other riding out to Jacko one afternoon. Perdita was with Marcus; Charles Byrd, alone. Marcus called out to him to ride with them, and he brought his chestnut alongside.

  His first courteous words to Lady Beaminster were courteously answered, but then she dropped behind so that he was left conversing with her husband, unable to look back without rudeness.

  He was disconcerted. The day after the last ball, he had sat contentedly on his verandah smoking a cigar and pondering on the possibilities that the evening had presented. Too experienced in his dealings with women not to understand the expression in her eyes while she had sung to him, he felt as though he might after all be able to settle the unlikely and tiresome desire he felt for her.

  He had been given permission to join the Army of the Indus on its march to Ferozepore, whence he would ride on alone except for his servants to Persia and so on to Russia
and Europe. It would seem therefore the ideal moment for a consummation and settlement of his feelings. There could be no lingering, disenchanted diminution of attraction; only a sharp parting, before the glow had faded. They could both, he thought, enjoy the ache of deprivation that way and keep the memory of ‘love’undamaged for as long as they chose. Carefully stubbing out his cigar, he leaned back in the long cushioned chair, looking out towards the valley and thinking of ways to overcome the practical difficulties.

  Lady Beaminster was not experienced in intrigue, he was sure, and so it was more than usually important that all should go smoothly and in guaranteed privacy. Any nervousness on her part would quite ruin the bittersweet moment of fulfilment and loss that he planned.

  Looking up at the moon, a thread of a crescent in the black sky, he felt a faint stirring of the disgust that he had thought long conquered. An image of his father’s activities slid into his mind like a scar, and the memory of his mother’s pain opened it again.

  Reminding himself that he had no wife to hurt, and that Captain Lord Beaminster was manifestly not in love with his, Charles Byrd resolved to proceed, only to be foiled by his quarry’s determined evasion.

  He called several times, unsuccessfully, and began to wonder yet again whether she had been treated to gossip about him. After her coolness when they met out riding, he was sure of it, and the ache he felt had none of the elegiac pleasure he had wanted.

  The army marched on 6 November, and Charles Byrd was disturbed to realize that his disappointment was caused not so much by his failure to seduce a beautiful woman as by his suspicion that he left her thinking badly of him.

  For her part, Perdita felt a regret so sharp that it was not assuaged even by the knowledge that she had not betrayed her shameful feelings for him.