The Distant Kingdom Read online

  Perdita, who had noticed only the look of contemptuous pity on the young man’s arrogant face, answered:

  ‘Juliana, I am sure your mother would not like you to discuss such a subject, and it is very wrong to tell lies, even out of a desire to be kind. Lieutenant Smytham looks at me as if he despises me, as I am sure he does.’

  ‘You sound just like a governess I once had. But I won’t say any more, I promise. Oh, it’s so hot: I can hardly breathe. If it were not for the shower bath, I should expire.’

  Lady Beaminster had at first looked on the growing friendship between her daughter and the odd young woman who shared her cabin with some disfavour; but there was very little she could do to prevent it. Nevertheless, she made several searching enquiries into Miss Whitney’s antecedents and in the end she was satisfied: even if she was sadly lacking in graces, she was perfectly respectable, had been decently brought up by a clergyman and his wife, and was distantly related to a family Lady Beaminster had once heard of. What was more, Juliana seemed prepared to accept some of Miss Whitney’s gentle suggestions for calmer behaviour and the proper direction of one’s thoughts, and for that Lady Beaminster was deeply grateful.

  Perdita herself, once she had discovered that Juliana shared her disgust at the killing and torturing of the birds, began to shed some of her reserve and talked to Juliana more and more like the sister she had never had. She could not bring herself to talk of the things her uncle had said and done, but she did confess to the sense of awful foreboding she had had ever since the first albatross had been shot at the beginning of the calm. Juliana, who had never read ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’and who had no particular objection to the shooting of defenceless birds for sport, tried to laugh her friend out of her fear and once the calm broke said gaily:

  ‘You see, your poet was wrong. Nothing happened after the death of that albatross. Cheer up, Perdita.’ And Perdita had tried to shake off the sense of doom, telling herself that perhaps Mrs Flaxman was right and that she had indeed allowed herself to be too much influenced by what she read. But her attempts at self-regulation seemed doomed when, on one enormously hot afternoon while she was watching the sun flash off the waves, she felt the frightening hot and cold prelude to one of her convulsions. Gripping the rail, she closed her eyes in concentration as she tried to keep the horrible force at bay. But as always it was stronger than she. Just at the moment when she thought she was winning – as it tricked her by pretending to recede – she relaxed and it got her.

  She was aware of nothing more until she opened her eyes to see Mrs Flaxman’s face, angry and embarrassed, close to her own. She said shakily:

  ‘Oh, I am so sorry. Did I … I mean, have I had a fit?’

  ‘Hush, Miss Whitney. Not so loud. When Lady Juliana came running to me I told everyone that you had fainted from the heat. I think they believed me, but you must not tell anyone anything different. Will you promise me that, at least?’

  To Perdita, who felt rather as though she was floating peacefully through warm space despite the pain in her head and in her bitten tongue, Mrs Flaxman’s anxiety seemed absurd. But all her fears and anger had been dissolved for the moment into the peaceful warmth and so she only smiled and nodded. Then her eyes slid sideways and focused on Juliana.

  ‘I am sorry, Juliana. You must have been very frightened. I know it is horrible to watch.’

  The girl, who had been extremely frightened by what she had seen and heard, particularly as Perdita had begun to come round, said:

  ‘Yes; I was afraid. But you are better now. Do you feel strong enough to come below? I think you should get out of the sun and down to the cabin before any people come along here.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Perdita and pushed herself up off the deck. She staggered a little as she worked out how to balance herself again, but Juliana was there to give her an arm. Mrs Flaxman was relieved to see that she would not have to go with them, but she did remind Juliana of her promise to say nothing to anyone of what she called ‘the unfortunate incident’.

  Perdita kept to her bed for a week, during which a looming storm passed away: the great dark clouds that had been threatening the ship for days disappeared during one night, and the sinister greenish tinge to the sky vanished into a clear bright blue. The wind, which had been tossing the ship around in a most unpleasant, nearly violent, motion seemed to control itself and blew them strongly towards their destination. The sporting gentlemen were confined to the deck and with their guns stowed for the moment they seemed to revert to humanity. They took up their sketch pads again, and their writing tablets. When Perdita at last emerged from her cabin she was astonished to see Lieutenant Smytham himself sitting in the stern sketching with some delicacy the very species he had been slaughtering so little time before.

  Happily for Perdita there were no more calms and no further instances of cruelty, so that all she had to contend with during the last two months of the voyage was boredom and loneliness. When they were alone together, Juliana was happy to confide in her and listen to her, but in company she would smile at anyone, and when there was dancing on the deck by moonlight, Juliana was always surrounded by gentlemen clamouring for a turn with her. Perdita, considering it very strange that Lady Beaminster was prepared to allow her young daughter to dance in such circumstances, even under her strict gaze, would walk off into some dim corner so that she did not have to feel conspicuous in her partnerless state.

  It was hidden in one such shadowed place that she overheard a group of Lancers, who had walked apart to enjoy their cigars.

  One, whose voice she did not recognize, said, ‘Poor old Whitney’s going to have quite a time of it with that woman in his house.’

  ‘Is that a brother? What does he do? Not army, surely?’

  ‘No. Her father: I’ve never quite been able to work out what he does. He certainly has some connection with the Company, but I suspect he is also in business on his own account – bit of a nabob, you know. And he lives rather a, well, sybaritic life.’

  Perdita was interested and would have liked to have come out of hiding to question the speaker, but she was too embarrassed.

  ‘Not the man to be landed with a bluestocking spin of a daughter then.’

  ‘No, indeed, but I don’t suppose she will be with him all that long.’

  ‘What? You don’t think she’ll be married off, do you? Wouldn’t fancy it myself, even if he is a nabob. All those books – and that morality!’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ came another voice, which Perdita thought she recognized as Lieutenant Smytham’s, ‘she’s got a sweet face when she smiles. And a damn fine ankle too.’ A burst of laughter followed, bringing a painful blush to Perdita’s pale cheeks.

  ‘You shockin’rake. When did you see that?’

  ‘Oh, one day when she was worked up about something and pacing up and down the deck, her skirts went swishing about and I got a clear view.’

  ‘Look out, old boy, here comes the major.’

  Perdita waited in her corner, almost too humiliated to breathe. She tried to forget the terms in which Lieutenant Smytham had described her body in concentrating on the small particles of information she could add to the picture of her father. If he were a sybarite and a bit of a nabob, he could not possibly be the careworn, fever-ridden lonely administrator into whose life she could bring some comfort, which she had lately been imagining. Now she substituted for that comforting figure a rotund, yellow-complexioned merchant with snuff stains on his cheeks, who would despise her and make fun of her to his cronies, much as the Lancers had done.

  By the time the ship reached the Bengal coast, she was in a pitiable state of nervous distress, which even Juliana could not penetrate. They had been at sea for 135 days, and Perdita had been surrounded by strangers who seemed to despise her and whose preoccupations horrified her; she knew no one in India; Juliana and Lady Beaminster, the only people who had been remotely congenial to her, were due to travel up the country as soon as they landed
, to stay with Juliana’s brother, and Perdita was terrified of discovering that she could not like her father nor he her. She almost reached the stage of wishing she was a paid companion or governess in rainy East Anglia. But when she found herself thinking such thoughts, she would take herself to task and walk slowly round the deck looking out over the sea and trying to recapture the sense of freedom she had felt when they first sailed.

  On the morning they reached the Diamond Harbour the sea was as flat and gleaming as a newly polished silver salver; the pale lavender sky overhead was mistily pearled with heat; and from the direction of the flat, tawny shore drifted a most peculiar smell, not exactly unpleasant, Perdita decided, but definitely strange. She watched two small steam-powered boats come bustling across the shining sea towards the motionless East Indiaman, trying to rehearse words she could say to her father: words to placate him, to assure him that she meant to be no trouble, that if he did not like her she would of course go straight back to England. But even as she said them over in her mind she knew that they were not right. Then another thought struck her: what if he were not at the harbour to meet her? How would she find her way to his house in that town with the strange name? She had very little money and no knowledge of Hindustani. What if she were lost in this place full of wild beasts and savages …? The rising panic was mercifully checked by one of the ship’s officers, who saluted her and handed her a letter.

  ‘The pilot’s boat brought letters aboard, ma’am.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, taking it with slightly damp fingers. As soon as he had gone, she broke the seal and spread out the folded sheet to read:

  My dear Perdita,

  Welcome home. They tell me that passengers won’t be disembarked until two o’clock this afternoon, and so I shall have to curb my impatience to see my long-lost daughter.

  This last year must have been very sad for you, Perdita, but now that we are together we shall start again and rebuild a happy life.

  Your devoted father,

  Edward Whitney

  As she went down to her cabin to finish packing, she passed Lieutenant Smytham, who was pleased to have confirmation of his estimate of her looks. When she smiled she did indeed have a very sweet face. He touched his cap and said something civil, and was amused to see her blush pinkly and hear her say breathlessly:

  ‘Thank you, Lieutenant Smytham, yes indeed it is a lovely day.’ And then she added in a rush, ‘I did not think I could ever be so happy.’

  Chapter Two

  Edward Whitney turned out to be quite different, not only from her uncle and the men she had met on the Jupiter, but also from the harassed, ill, lonely administrator and the gross nabob of her terrified imaginings. Instead he was a tall, loose-limbed man with an expressive face, eyes as blue as her own, and a kindness that led him to make her life as easy as he possibly could. His first words when they met at the Diamond Harbour were: ‘I had been expecting a little dark creature like your mother, not a golden beauty! My dear Perdita, I am so very happy to see you at last.’

  He took her to an enormous, white-pillared house, where they were to stay until January, while she became acclimatized to some of the odder aspects of life in India and he sorted out his business affairs. As they climbed the broad gracious steps to the front door she whispered: ‘But Papa, this isn’t your house, is it?’

  He laughed and said: ‘No, I sold my Calcutta house when I moved up country, but I am sure you will be comfortable with Macdonald and his wife. They’re a friendly pair.’

  So it proved. They all three appeared not to notice her faux pas, or her continual clumsiness, and when she conscientiously apologized for quoting something she had read, Mrs Macdonald said warmly:

  ‘My dear Miss Whitney, please do not apologize. All I have to do here is ride out on our one watered road in the evening, and write letters home or read. I am delighted to hear about Mr Coleridge’s poem, which has not come my way. Please tell me some more of it.’

  She took Perdita to visit the Miss Edens at Government House and frequently bemoaned the fact that Perdita’s mourning made her ineligible to attend the dinners and balls that the Governor General and his sisters held there for Calcutta society. Perdita, however, was relieved. There were so many things she had to come to terms with that the idea of formal entertainments was a daunting one. Instead, she dined with her father and the Macdonalds, when they were not being entertained elsewhere, and the occasional guest who was received en famille in the vast, richly furnished rooms.

  The heat was a trial to Perdita at first, and she suffered all the small agonies of prickly heat and insect bites. She discovered that the English considered that no one was properly healthy who did not suffer prickly heat, but she found that hard to believe; she learned to lie in her room with the blinds closed and the punkah going all through the day, too hot even to read or write, until it was cool enough to get up and drive out on the road that was kept watered to lay the otherwise choking dust. She learned, too, to call luncheon ‘tiffin’and gradually absorbed all the slang and the Indian words that made up the private language of Anglo-India. She slowly became accustomed to never stirring without at least two servants trailing behind her, and even to the sight of the durzee – a most dignified man with a long beard – mending her underclothes in public on the verandah.

  In many ways, the whole experience of India was disturbing. With the sight of dreadful beggars in all the streets and corpses floating down the river daily, with the endless talk of the burning of widows and other strange native customs, Perdita could feel the closeness of death and corruption – a closeness that was oddly underlined by the comfort of the life she now lived – until her body ceased to seem part of herself as it always had done, but became something outside her, part enemy, part fragile dependant needing care and protection. She found the sensation disorientating.

  But soon even that became familiar, and as she grew accustomed she found herself enjoying the life she led despite the awful poverty and suffering she glimpsed in the town. She began to volunteer remarks to her father and sometimes even to Mr Macdonald. They both seemed to be interested in her point of view, although she could not make them understand her indignation over the plight of the sick and the beggars, and they would ask questions to draw her out. She questioned them, too, intrigued to hear about their business, which appeared to be based on the production and export of opium.

  One evening as they were all four driving out to Garden Reach to visit Sir Charles Metcalfe, she asked Mr Macdonald where all the opium went, puzzled that even a country so large as India could absorb the vast amounts they told her were produced each year.

  ‘China, my dear. It goes to China to pay for the tea we all like to drink.’

  ‘But why do the Chinese want so much?’

  ‘I’m not sure that they do, but we have got them so accustomed to the drug that they cannot support life without it and so we have a market.’

  ‘But surely that is not quite right, Mr Macdonald?’ Perdita said, a little nervously.

  Her father intervened:

  ‘Possibly not, but it is the Chinese’s fault for insisting that the Company pays for tea in bullion. If they would only take manufactures in exchange, we could slow down the opium trade. But their insatiable demand for silver almost ruined England, and the only thing they will pay silver for themselves is opium. Enough.’

  The unusually irritable note in her father’s voice was enough to stop Perdita’s criticism immediately and she sat in silence, blushing furiously and keeping her eyes on the road in front of the carriage.

  Kind Mrs Macdonald hated to see her cowed for a matter so stupid as politics and said:

  ‘I have been thinking that it would be a good idea for you to buy silks and muslins for your new gowns while you are here. There will be little choice in the Hills, and my durzee is very skilled. He can make them up for you and then when you put off your mourning you will have plenty of suitable clothes. What do you say? Shall I send the s
irdar to the bazaar tomorrow to bring back a selection of materials?’

  ‘Good idea, Mrs Macdonald,’ said Edward Whitney, relieved that she had successfully turned the subject. ‘You will need plenty, Perdita, and I can think of no one who could help you choose better than Mrs Macdonald.’

  ‘Thank you both, very much,’ said Perdita quietly.

  When the time came to leave the amiable couple, her luggage greatly increased with all the things they had helped her to buy, Perdita was more reluctant than she could have believed possible. But the 800-mile journey north would mean her father’s uninterrupted company for weeks, and that in itself was an attraction that quickly made up for losing the kindness of Mrs Macdonald.

  Perdita soon discovered that Edward Whitney was happy to talk to her on any subject except the production and sale of opium and seemed never to have heard of Mrs Flaxman’s innumerable rules for polite conversation, or Uncle George’s views on what females should think and say. Her father told her anything she asked. They talked of the countryside through which they were travelling with such enervating slowness, of the history of the Company and how the first piratical traders had laid the foundations for the modern army and administration that now controlled the presidencies of Madras, Bengal and Bombay. He brought alive for her all the glitter and strangeness of the native states that he had visited on the Company’s business – and his own – during the years he had spent in India alone while she and her mother protected their health in Norfolk. At times her heart ached when she thought of his terrible isolation. One evening at dinner, when she had gained enough confidence, she said something to him about it. He laughed and said:

  ‘I was not without consolation, my dear.’ Then he stopped laughing and said seriously, ‘She had to go, Perdita. She was always ill and there was your health to consider. She had lost all our other babies, and you were her only hope. She knew she could never have any more children.’