The Distant Kingdom Read online

  ‘But I am as strong as a horse, except for my fits,’ she said watching his kind blue eyes smiling at her in the candlelight.

  ‘Then that must have been the good Norfolk air. You were a very sickly baby. And besides, there was nothing for her to do here, no one to visit; very few other white women lived here then, and she was afraid of the natives. She hated it when I had to travel: afraid to come with me to the native states and afraid to stay alone.’

  ‘I can understand her fear,’ pursued Perdita, ‘but I can’t see why she minded the lack of occupation. She did nothing at home that I can remember. Even before she became ill, I mean: a little sewing, some small charities in the village, a little reading – that was all.’

  ‘Did she never go to London, or visit anyone?’

  ‘Oh, no. We could not have afforded that. She and my uncle and aunt used to dine at the manor sometimes, but that was all. It was a very … well, bleak life in Norfolk.’ Perdita was upset to see an angry frown distort Edward’s classic features and rushed to apologize as usual.

  He brushed her words aside and his face relaxed as he said:

  ‘Well, I shall just have to try to make up for all that now that you are here with me. I am sorry that our mourning prevented you from enjoying all that Calcutta could have offered, but that will be over when we get to the Hills and you shall have the girlhood she would not allow you.’

  ‘Could not, Papa; not “would not”‘.

  He looked at her as though he were weighing up a difficult problem before he said:

  ‘No. You should know that it was definitely “would not”. I sent drafts to Child’s Bank with funds enough for you both to live in more comfortable circumstances; it was not much at the beginning, of course, but as my income increased so did the drafts. But she would not accept them.’

  Perdita’s shock must have been mirrored in her pale face, for he continued:

  ‘I am sorry to have to tell you this, but it is better that we are honest. She would not take the money.’

  ‘But why ever not? How could she have lived like that if she did not have to?’

  ‘Because she thought my way of life was shameful and the sources of my income evil.’ He paused for a few moments, waiting for the questions, but Perdita was unable to speak, and so eventually he gave her the explanation.

  ‘My money comes from opium and, like you, she considered it wrong to make money from such a substance.’

  ‘So that was why she would never take any laudanum at the end. Papa, whatever she believed about the trade with China, I am sure she was wrong about that. To suffer so if you do not have to must be wrong.’ Then she smiled, trying to show him that she would not ask anything more, despite her deep conviction that he was wrong to profit from such a business.

  One morning the following March, Perdita woke from a sleep so deep that she felt as though she had been half buried in the yielding softness of her feather bed. As she dragged herself into wakefulness, she stretched languorously and felt a tingle of delight run through her body. She lay wondering a little at her happiness. For so long in England she had woken to cold anxiety and fear, but now India had warmed her, and, as she lay in the silver and yellow silken bed that had once seemed so barbaric, she luxuriated in content.

  It was not just the astounding physical comfort of her new life, the army of servants to attend to her every want, the strange but delectable food, the delight of never feeling cold (it had continually amused her to hear her compatriots in Calcutta speaking of ‘the cold weather’) or the wonderful absence of dizziness and fits; a large part of her happiness was centred in the person of Edward Whitney.

  Soon her ayah would come in with the clothes she would need for her customary morning ride with him, but she had a few more minutes to enjoy her extraordinary sense of ease.

  The room in which she lay was dominated by the bed, and it seemed to be a symbol of everything that had made India such a revelation of delights. Ornately carved, its posts were covered in thinly beaten silver, and it was hung with yellow silk shawls from Cashmere instead of curtains. The dazzling colour was echoed in the window blinds through which the sun was gleaming for once.

  Perdita had been disappointed to discover that Simla was as liable to fogs, rain and snow as Norfolk, but the loveliness of the place soon made up for that, and the generous aromatic fires that were kept burning in all the rooms every day ensured comfort. She pulled the silk quilt up under her chin and allowed herself to dream.

  Almost she could feel herself a beautiful woman in this room. Her glance wandered over the luxuriously embroidered dressing gown that Edward had given her, and the beautiful ivory brushes that lay on a silver table between the windows. The coarse matting on the floor was covered with handsome silky carpets that he had had sent down from Bokhara. Everywhere she looked she saw something strange and lovely; only her sad black English clothes seemed to have any connection with the pathetic creature she had been, or the miserable life she had once led.

  The door opened and in glided her ayah with the intelligence that the burra sahib would expect her in half an hour. At least that is what Perdita thought she said, for the ayah’s English was non-existent and Perdita’s own Hindustani still clumsy, despite the lessons her father had arranged for her. As she sipped the tea the girl had brought, Perdita thought how much simpler life would be if she could only wear a pair of loose comfortable white chintz trousers and knee-length tunic like her ayah’s, instead of the stiff hideous habit and monstrous underclothes she would have to put on. She thought she might even have been graceful if she did not have to walk around encased in whalebone and serge.

  Suddenly shocked at her own immodesty, Perdita put down her tea cup and scrambled up, thinking that perhaps lazing in that bizarre bed was responsible for making her behave like a courtesan. She allowed her ayah to dress her in silence and tried to avoid the sight of herself in the looking glass. When she emerged on to the verandah, she found Edward already there, idly slapping his crop against his gleaming boots, and she ran over to him, profusely apologizing for having kept him waiting.

  ‘My dear Perdita, it does not matter in the slightest,’ he told her, once again furiously angry with his dead wife and her relations for turning his intelligent, beautiful daughter into this nervous, shrinking woman. When she had first arrived he had been appalled, and at moments during their months with the Macdonalds in Calcutta it had even crossed his mind that she was unbalanced. For the first few days she had hardly spoken except to apologize, and had been absurdly clumsy, walking into chairs and tripping over small tables, her whole body apparently a mass of uncoordinated angles. But gradually she had begun to relax, to tell him something of her life, and finally to respond to his efforts to draw her out.

  To his delight, he had found that she had a sense of humour, and could make wickedly apposite comments on some of his acquaintances; and he had found that her isolation and lack of social savoir faire had at least left her mind uncluttered by the sort of second-hand judgements he heard all around him in Anglo-India. When he explained the political situation facing the new Governor General, she had asked some very shrewd questions, and clearly understood all the implications of what he told her. As they had grown more used to one another, he had come to enjoy her and to have few regrets about being saddled with such an elderly daughter in his house. He would never have rejected her, believing firmly that it was up to him to make up to her for the miserable childhood she had suffered, but finding her such good company was a relief.

  And the more he came to like and admire her, the angrier he became. If his wife had wanted to live in uncomfortable poverty for a scruple, that was her own affair, but in spurning his money she had condemned their child to a life of unending punishment, and that he found he could not forgive. He had only to watch Perdita change from the friendly intelligent woman he had discovered into a stiff, gauche spinster in company to recognize the severity of the punishment. She was always pathetically grateful to be sp
oken to with the barest civility in other people’s houses, and had seemed to be overjoyed when she had discovered that Lady Beaminster had brought her daughter up to Simla for the hot weather, as though unaware that they would never have spoken to her in England, and that she was only invited to spend so much time with them because of the lack of suitable companions for the Lady Juliana in their restricted society.

  Edward Whitney was under no such illusion and he feared that when the son arrived to join them, Perdita’s visits to her ladyship’s bungalow would be severely curtailed. He decided that he must make plans to prevent the hurt that he foresaw for her.

  The thought reminded him of something else, and as they moved off towards the hills he said:

  ‘Now that the heat is coming, I believe that you should relax your mourning. It would not be improper to wear some of the lighter gowns you had made up in Calcutta.’

  ‘But, Papa, it is hardly a year.’

  ‘I am aware of that,’ he said with a smile that went unanswered, ‘but it will not help her for you to make yourself ill in this climate by wearing unsuitable clothes. Even up here it can become uncomfortably sultry. If you are worried about the conventions why not consult Lady Beaminster? I am sure she will agree. And would you not rather put off your blacks?’

  ‘Oh yes, indeed,’ she said and sighed.

  ‘You must not grieve. You did what you could for her – far more than you should ever have been asked to do,’ he said, bitterly angry all over again, ‘and now she is gone. It is time for you to live a little selfishly.’

  ‘But isn’t that wicked? Sometimes I am so shocked when …’ she paused, looked sideways at him and, reassured by the familiar smile crinkling the corners of his eyes, continued, ‘when I realize that I am glad that she … that she …’

  ‘… is dead,’ he finished for her. ‘You would be a most unnatural woman if you were not, Perdita. You should never be afraid of acknowledging the emotions that you feel.’ He paused for a moment, but then decided that this was too important to ignore and started again: ‘English people are taught that there is something shocking in every feeling except duty, family affection and guilt, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with being happy. So long as you are not damaging someone else you should enjoy whatever you can.’

  She rode on thoughtfully, obviously turning over what he had said in her mind. After a while she looked up at him and smiled more openly and serenely than she had yet. He was enchanted by her and wondered how he could tell her to smile like that at people she met instead of looking as though she expected them to strike her. He said:

  ‘I believe that more firmly than anything else, my dear. It does no one else any good at all for you to be unhappy.’

  ‘Thank you, Papa. That makes sense,’ was all she said, but he thought that he had made some progress. They rode on at ease with each other again, through the flower-filled paths towards Jacko, the absurdly named mountain to the west of Simla.

  It was one of her favourite routes, for it led quickly away from the town and its difficult inhabitants into a paradise of green valleys, tumbling torrential streams and quite beautiful trees. There were the vast cedars, whose scent could transport her instantly into the chiefly imaginary world of her early childhood, enormous rhododendrons with fat piles of buds that were just beginning to show their colour, and of course the flowers: tiny wild tulips starred the new grass in the upland valleys, and drifts of violets echoed the purple of the distant Himalayan peaks.

  As she bent low to avoid an overhanging branch, Edward admired her increased confidence in handling the sturdy hill-pony he had bought for her and taught her to ride. Even at the small compliment she blushed again, and again he was afraid for her. But she seemed to sense his momentary discomfort and banished it by asking him about the silver furniture in her bedroom.

  ‘I found it in Lahore when I was there last year,’ he answered.

  ‘Lahore in the Punjab? I did not know that you had travelled there. Was it for the Company?’

  ‘You must have been studying my maps,’ he said, pleased. ‘Yes, I was asked to take the Governor General’s compliments and messages to Runjeet Singh, the ruler of the Sikhs. They call him the Lion of the Punjab, you know, because he keeps his country very firmly under control. But I fear that there is going to be trouble with him.’

  ‘Trouble between him and the Company?’

  ‘I hope not, but there is a tricky mass of tangled interests up there in the north-west, and someone is bound to try to cut through it.’

  Perdita looked at him, puzzled, and he tried to explain briefly the sources of the dangerous explosiveness of the frontier lands.

  ‘Beyond the Punjab lies Afghanistan, which is ruled by three men. The most important to us is the Dost Mohammed Khan, who reigns in Caubul and who hates Runjeet. We need both of them and it could be awkward if they should come to blows.’

  ‘But why do we need the Afghans, Papa? I know that the Company trades with the Punjab, but surely there is nothing for us in Afghanistan? I thought you told me that they despise trade.’

  ‘Yes, that’s true, but they have men of other races to do their trading for them; and at some time we have to move up the Indus to find new markets for our manufactured goods. Then, too, the Afghans have some commodities that we want. But it is not so much for trade that we need their friendship. Afghanistan is all that stands between our sphere of influence and that of the Tsar of Russia. And if Russia were to conquer Afghanistan there would be nothing to stop her armies invading India. War between England or the Company and Russia must be avoided at all costs.’

  ‘I should have thought all war should be avoided.’

  ‘As Lord Auckland has said, my dear, “The most peaceful policy is not always the most pacific.” Sometimes you have to risk a small war to prevent a greater.’

  ‘I suppose so, but to settle a quarrel between two states by murdering each other’s people seems truly absurd – and cruel.’

  ‘Very likely. That is why we have to send an envoy to the Dost’s court to try to keep him allied to our interests. But if diplomacy fails war is the only way – and it is the natural way. You have only to look at an animal defending its territory or young to see that. But enough,’ he said, seeing that her face had taken on the strained, white look he remembered from the early days at Calcutta, ‘you asked about Lahore. Well …’ and he went on to describe the city and its warlike people.

  She listened, interested, and when he paused said feelingly, ‘How marvellous it must have been. I wish …’ but then she paused, still finding it very difficult to express any desires of her own. He encouraged her and she went on: ‘I wish I could travel and see some more of this country. Sometimes I feel as though I were still in England.’

  Edward laughed at that, and, stretching his arm in a wide circle that seemed to embrace the distant snow-turbaned peaks of the Himalayas, the towering rhododendrons with their massive flower buds, and the strange scents that were the only thing that she remembered from childhood, he said:

  ‘Anything further from the Norfolk of my youth I cannot imagine.’

  Perdita laughed too and said:

  ‘No, no, Papa. Not the countryside, or the birds or trees or any of the natural surroundings, but the way we live. Apart from the servants I see no Indian people, and my life is one of visiting and being visited by these sneering English people, getting up sales of work and recitals like Lady Beaminster’s for charity, discussing only English things and ignoring everything that happens outside our immediate concerns. For example, yesterday Mrs Fletcher told me, as though it was of startling importance, that the Governor General’s sisters have a small dog called Chance and that when she and Colonel Fletcher were last in Calcutta, she gave it a biscuit. And when I ask her some question about India, she looks at me as though I am mad, tells me what a terrible place it is and changes the subject.’

  ‘Well, she is a thoroughly stupid woman, and her world is bounded by herself, the wea
ther and her children. One day perhaps I shall take you to meet some real Indians, but you must work at your Hindustani first.’

  ‘Of course, Papa,’ she said, accepting a rebuke he had not thought he was making, ‘I am trying, but I find it very difficult.’

  He silently cursed his clumsiness and suggested they rode home to breakfast, adding:

  ‘What are your plans for today?’

  ‘I am going to Lady Beaminster’s after breakfast to practise for the recital, and then I said I would sit with Juliana, and perhaps go for a drive later.’

  ‘Well do talk to Lady Beaminster about your clothes. I’m sure she will agree with me.’

  The rehearsal went well enough, and Lady Beaminster began to believe that she might raise quite a large sum for the starving. On her journey to the Hills, she, like Perdita Whitney, had been severely shocked to see the effect of a famine that was raging from Delhi to Allahabad. Its victims lay dying by the roadside, untended and unhelped by the visiting English, who seemed hardly to notice them, or by the wealthy Indians, who appeared to care even less.

  But it was the children that determined her to do something to help. She was not a sentimental woman, and she had strong views on the proper station of the lower orders, but the sight of those tiny, stick-limbed children with shockingly swollen bellies and frighteningly staring eyes, who begged monotonously for food in each of the towns and villages she passed, could not be ignored. Lady Beaminster had decided then to do something for them.

  A musical evening had seemed the best plan; not only would it be quite different from the fancy sales that the other English ladies liked to hold, but it would also give Juliana an occupation and stop her thoughts from dwelling exclusively on the unsuitable man she believed she loved. She had an adequate contralto voice and the doctor and chaplain were providing the bass and tenor parts respectively, leaving only a soprano to find. Lady Beaminster had disliked the various senior officers‘ wives, who might have been thought suitable but seemed to her to be both underbred and arrogant, and, despairing, had yielded to Juliana’s persuasions to include Miss Whitney. The young woman could, it seemed, sing in tune, and was properly grateful for the attention paid to her. She did not encroach, much to her benefactress’s relief, and so she was allowed to continue the role she had taken on the Jupiter as a kind of honorary companion for the rebellious Juliana. In fact, Lady Beaminster had come to rely on Miss Whitney.