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Chapter Nineteen
Cawnpore
11:20 AM
Upon their arrival at the base of Cawnpore, everyone scrambled from the carts. There
was no official host or hostess to oversee the outing, so it would have been a dreadful thrash had the
servants not proven so admirably efficient.
Within minutes of the approach of the final cart, they had unloaded the tent on the dusty
flat at the bottom of the hill and within a few more minutes, there was a canopy billowing in the
breeze, offering shade. Hampers with food followed, and a grand block of ice, unwrapped from a
white cloth and slid into a shallow tray. Emma shuddered at the very sight of it. She looked around
for Amy, but did not see her. Walking with Tom, perhaps?
After the long ride, Emma found she needed to take a walk of her own. She pulled away
from the chattering group and looked about for some privacy. There was likely to be a tent for this
purpose as well, a much smaller little enclave of dark muslin with a chamber pot inside, and although
she found the pieces of the traveling W.C. easily enough, no one had yet turned a hand to assembling
it. Emma sighed and looked up toward the hill. She would have to improvise.
***
The servants set up the long table, positioned the ice, and then unpacked the food.
Through a sort of tacit arrangement, the woman who had provided each dish stepped forward to claim
her contribution and to arrange the plate as she saw fit. Geraldine, who lacked a kitchen – and indeed
any inclination to cook even if she had been given access to Mrs. Tucker’s – had supplied a variety of
breads from a shop she had been assured was the finest patisserie within Bombay. It was likely the
only patisserie in Bombay, she reflected, as she fanned the croissants, slices of yeast bread, and
poppyseed rolls out across a tray. For the thousandth time since coming to India, she gave silent
thanks that such silly ceremonies were not part of her daily life. Back in London she had her cook
and butler Gage to deal with the soul-numbing details of entertaining friends. And the women of the
Raj of course had their servants as well – even the middle class boasting a far greater contingent than
anyone would expect, thanks to the plethora of locals willing to work for a shilling. Yet it would seem
that the local standard was for the memsahibs to at least pretend to have produced the food they
brought to picnics and other Byculla Club socials. For they now fluttered around the tables, no doubt
interrupting the legitimate servants from their legitimate work, all of them making a great fuss over
their individual dishes.
We have come at great effort to Cawnpore, Geraldine thought, brushing back a strand of
hair with a floury hand, and yet, now that we are here, it would seem that the entire group is
determined to ignore Cawnpore. For here we all stand at the base of the hill, at the very foot of
the ruined fortress, and yet none of our party has made a move to go higher. We busy ourselves
with the mechanics of the picnic, and thus delay the moment when we climb up to see the
crumbling walls, the plaques embedded in them and, most of all, the well. The well where so many
people died for the crime of…
For the crime of being just like us, she concluded, giving up on arranging the tray in any
artful fashion and stepping back from the table. The crime of being white, and foreign, and careless
with this power which was conferred upon us, so random and so unearned.