Amitav Ghosh - Flood of Fire

She wrenched her hand defiantly from his grasp: ‘Look — if you want miss-ish sighs and swoonings and protestations of love, you would do well, Mr Reid, to seek out the Jenny Mandevilles of this world. You certainly won’t get them from me. I have long outgrown such girlish fancies.’

‘But you too were a girl once, Mrs Burnham — were you never in love then?’

Hearing a sharp intake of breath, Zachary steeled himself for a rebuff. But when she spoke again it was in a tremulous whisper: ‘Yes, I was in love once.’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘It was a long time ago and I was no older than that silly minx, Jenny. I had just returned from England, where I’d been sent for my schooling. He was a subaltern in my father’s regiment, fresh from England — only a year older than me. He was a little wild, as ensigns should be, and very handsome, in a dark-haired way. Almost from the moment I set eyes on him, I was lost — completely, utterly in love, as only a girl of seventeen can be. Your little Miss Mandeville has yet to feel a tenth part of the passions that agitated me then.’

‘And he?’

‘He too. We were both besotted.’

‘Why did you not marry him then?’

‘It was impossible. My parents would not have allowed it — he was utterly unsuitable in their eyes. His father was a greengrocer in Fulham, and it was said that his mother was a Levantine Jew. The rumour was that he had got his officer’s commission through blackmail: his mother had been the mistress of a member of the Board of the East India Company and she had forced her lover to use his influence. And it wasn’t as if he could have afforded a wife anyway. He was never one to play cards for craven-stakes — he had not a groat to his name.’

‘So what became of him?’

‘I cannot tell you — I have neither seen nor heard from him since the day we were torn apart, eighteen years ago.’ Her voice began to tremble again and she paused until she had regained control of it. ‘That summer my father’s regiment was quartered in Ranchi, which is a town in the hills. It was winter, and the station was very gay, with many parties, picnics and tumashers. One day we were at a picnic, in a forest — there are lovely woodlands in those hills — and we slipped away for a walk. We got a little lost, the two of us, and I did not object when he put his arm around me; nor did I resist when he put his lips on mine. Indeed I would not have resisted if he had done more than that — we were burning for each other.’

‘But he did not?’

‘No. We heard his orderly’s voice, shouting for us: we hurried back and told my parents that we’d lost our way. But there must have been something in my expression to arouse my mother’s suspicions for when we got back to our bungalow she went to speak to my father. The next day I was whisked off to Calcutta to avert a scandal: my mother was terrified that people would think that I had been compromised so she decided to marry me off as quickly as possible. In those days Mr Burnham was dancing attendance on my father in the hope of securing a contract to provide supplies for a military expedition. One day I was told that Mr Burnham had offered for my hand. My mother said I could not hope for a better match.’

‘And the ensign? What became of him?’

‘He is still with his regiment, I expect. No doubt married, with a paltan of children swarming around his feet.’

‘Do you still think of him?’

‘Oh don’t! … it is too cruel.’ She turned her face away but he could tell that she was trying to stem a fresh flow of tears.

Never before had Mrs Burnham evinced so much emotion in front of Zachary: it was clear to him that the emotions the lieutenant had stirred in her were of a singular intensity, surpassing by far anything that she had ever felt for him. Certainly she had never shown signs of such passion with him; indeed he hadn’t thought her capable of it. A burst of vexation flashed through him and somewhere inside his chest a cinder of jealousy began to glow: who was this man, this lieutenant, whose memory could reach out to her through such a long tunnel of time, making her seem a stranger to him while she was in his own bed?

‘I’ll ask no more questions,’ he said, ‘but only if you answer one more.’

Having said this, he stumbled, for his query was strangely difficult to put into words. At last, lamely, he said: ‘Tell me: the lieutenant — was he …? Am I …? Are we … at all alike?’

At this she gave him a wan smile. ‘Oh no, my dear dear. You are as unlike each other as two men could possibly be — toolsmith and warrior, Eros and Mars.’

Zachary winced: who exactly she was referring to he did not know but he had the impression that the comparison was not, in any case, flattering to him: it was as if she had said, in so many words, that she would never love him, or anyone else, as much as she had loved her lost lieutenant; that he would be forever the captain of her heart.

Slowly, with much help from Rosa and Vico, Shireen was able to convince Shernaz and Behroze that there was no great danger in her travelling to China and that the voyage would be in their common interest. The next step was to carry the fight to her brothers and for this part of the campaign Shireen enlisted the help of her daughters. They arranged to meet with their uncles, hoping to test the waters on her behalf.

The meeting did not go well. The girls came back in tears, to report that their uncles had berated them for falling in with Shireen’s plan: if she went to China a terrible scandal was sure to ensue, they had said, and the whole family’s reputation would be endangered. The seths had accused their two nieces of being unfeeling, shameless and undutiful, to their mother and to their relatives.

All kinds of unfamiliar emotions surged up in Shireen as she listened to Shernaz and Behroze. Usually anger had an enervating effect on her, making her weary and listless, but in this instance she was roused to a fury. After the girls had left, she found that she could not sit still: as if girding for battle, she changed into a fresh sadra vest and a plain white sari. Then she marched downstairs and stormed into her brothers’ shared daftar, disregarding the protests of their shroffs and munshis. Standing in front of them, with her hands on her hips, she demanded to know if they really thought that it was in their power to keep her from visiting her husband’s grave?

Shireen’s brothers were younger than her and as children they had always been a little scared of her. The passage of time, and the reverses that Shireen had suffered over the years, had diluted their childhood fear but a trace of it surfaced again now. Other than a few evasive mumbles they could offer no answers to her questions.

Seizing upon their confusion, Shireen declared that the matter was not in their hands anyway; it was up to her to make up her mind, and she had already done so — neither they nor their wives, nor even her own daughters could prevail on her to give up her plan. It only remained for them to choose what kind of scandal they wanted to deal with. Did they want a public rift within the family? Or would they prefer to stand beside her, as their father and mother would surely have wanted them to? Did they not see that it was to their benefit to tell the world that their sister was doing what any grieving and dutiful widow would want to do? Didn’t they understand that if the family presented a united front to the world then the prestige of the Mestrie name would swing the balance and everyone would surely come around?

They started to fidget now and Shireen sensed that they were wavering. Planting herself in a chair she looked them directly in the eyes.

So tell me then, she demanded. How shall we go about this? What shall we tell people?