Free Lance Page 2

  ‘And prize awards and loot,’ Marriott answered bitterly. ‘The spoil from Seringapatam has made nabobs of you all.’

  ‘Ah, yes.’ Amaury languidly inspected the ceiling. There I was truly fortunate. Those jewel-studded armlets I - um - found in Tippoo’s palace have relieved my wants for a while. Another lucrative sack or two and soon I might retire to a plantation in Bengal!’

  Marriott contemplated the tall wide-shouldered figure lounging carelessly in the chair, the ruddy, aquiline face, unmarred by tropical sun, and the yellow hair that clustered on the folds of his cravat. Waistcoat and skin-tight breeches emphasized a slender waist, slim hips and long horseman’s legs. He sighed enviously.

  ‘I presume, Hugo, you did not abandon the party until the end, and took your share of wine? Yet you look fresh as an infant who has slept the clock around.’

  ‘A sound constitution.’ Amaury grinned. ‘Plus a harmless stratagem. I tell the servants to take away my glass after a hobnob the moment I put it down. When I feel the wine disposed to revolt I chew a few French olives, without swallowing the pulp. You should try it.’ His smile faded. ‘It was a happy chance I stayed to the finish. You become quarrelsome in your cups, Charles.’

  ‘Ah, God!’ said Marriott despairingly. ‘Have I a meeting on my hands!’

  ‘No. Not this time. I - ah - intervened, and contrived to smooth the matter over. Briscoe the attorney - whom you odiously offended - decided to overlook your manner. Which was possibly as well. You make lamentable practice with a pistol!’

  Marriott could imagine the style of Amaury’s mediation: the silken address which covered a steely menace. No one wanted to fight the finest shot in the Army.

  ‘India’s accursed climate,’ he continued, ‘is fraying your temper, sapping your resolution. It happens to us all. You sink three bottles of claret at a sitting - a year ago you could hardly swallow one. Your gambling becomes more reckless, your company . . . deplorable.’

  ‘Do you denigrate my friends?’ Marriott inquired icily. Amaury’s smile returned. ‘I do indeed. That set you frequent in the Black Town is naught but a bunch of rogues. Ellis’s house is no better than a gaming hell and brothel, he himself a sepoy officer broken for peculation. 'He should have been drummed from Madras years since.’

  ‘You often go there.’

  ‘To keep an eye on you, my friend,’ Amaury said seriously. ‘And I begin to find it tedious. Therefore you must shed your disreputable cronies and resume the company of gentlemen.’ His eye roved round the room, examining the bare plastered walls, cotton druggets on the floor, reed mat covering a string cot whose legs stood in earthen water-pots to discourage ants and vermin; rickety wooden chairs and tables, a cracked mirror hanging on a wall. ‘You keep spartan quarters here - ’tis no marvel you escape to doubtful haunts beyond the Fort.’ Thoughtfully he withdrew his sabre a finger’s breadth from the scabbard, and tapped it home. ‘I have rented a Garden House on Choultry Plain, overlooking the Adyar, high and cool - if one may use the word on Coromandel’s coast. Twenty pagodas a month. Come share with me!’

  ‘A tempting proposition.’ Marriott shrugged into the cotton shirt a servant proffered, pulled on nankeen breeches, cotton stockings and a white-sleeved waistcoat. ‘But the Company discourages Writers from living outside St George’s. I shall have to extract permission from old Harley - which will not be easy. I fear I don’t stand high in his regard!’

  ‘Senior Merchants abhor Writers; and colonels execrate cornets. Perfectly traditional in the Honourable Company.’ Amaury stood, donned his coat and settled the helmet on his head. ‘I must leave you. Hannibal has stood long enough - I wager that idiot sice has not thought to find him shade. Do your best, Charles. I shall appreciate your company; and you will find my friends more amusing than the riff-raff you consort with!’

  He sauntered from the room. The barber combed and pomaded Marriott’s hair and arranged a silken cravat loosely about his neck. He glanced in the mirror, glowered at the sallow, hollow cheeked face, thin-lipped mouth and thick black eyebrows, at the bleary brown eyes which returned his stare. Ramming a low- crowned hat on his head he clattered down the stairs, brusquely dismissed the palankeen and strolled to his place of work; a servant walking behind raised over his head a chatta - a circular shield of straw affixed to a bamboo pole.

  The office was fifty yards away. Before he reached the entrance the sweat coursed down his ribs.

  ‘You are late, Mr Marriott.’

  A glass inkwell flaunting a quill, sentried papers, books and ledgers which cluttered a mahogany table where Joseph Harley, Senior Merchant, crouched in a tall-backed chair and tapped fingertips together beneath his chin. His face was haggard and lined, like a crumpled brown-paper mask; the frosted hair was queued in the fashion of bygone days. Tired, sunken eyes inspected Marriott with resigned impatience. He had served twenty years in India, and never once gone back to England.

  Marriott found a handkerchief and wiped his brow. ‘Pray accept my apologies, Mr Harley. I was unavoidably detained.’

  ‘Truly. By a drunken orgy in the Black Town and ignorance of the gate guard’s regulations!’ Marriott’s dismay evoked an austere smile - a transient parting of lips on yellowing teeth. ‘My palankeen followed yours through the gate; I saw your disgraceful state. Mr Marriott, I have had previous cause to voice complaints about your dilatory attendance and your irregular way of life - a path which will bring you no preferment in the Service. I see I must speak very seriously indeed. Pray you sit down, sir.’

  Marriott sank into a chair. A servant, twin to the native behind Harley’s seat, moved silently from a comer and wafted a plaited fan above his head, hardly stirring the humid air.

  ‘You have been a covenanted servant for . . . how long, Mr Marriott?’

  ‘Two years, sir - as you well know.’

  ‘Truly - because you have been under my tutelage since you landed on the Coast. Your father, the good rector - Shaftesbury in Dorset, was it not? - wrote me on your behalf. I had some slight acquaintance with his family, many years since.’ The Senior Merchant’s eyes became momentarily remote; he gazed at a shuttered window’s sun-bleached wood, travelling back in memory across two thousand leagues of land and sea to a rose-red house under whispering beeches, to lawns dew-gemmed in the morning and air like crisp white wine.

  He shook his shoulders, and sighed a little.

  ‘He asked me to look after you: a plea I accepted with some reluctance, for I understood you left England under a cloud, and somewhat hastily. Was it not so?’

  Marriott scowled. ‘A youthful prank in Covent Garden, a fracas with the Watch. Unfortunately a watchman died.’

  ‘So.’ Harley stroked an ivory sandbox, closed the lid. ‘But your father, having a kinsman on the Court of Directors, secured your nomination as a Writer and, disbursing guineas, immediate passage on an Indiaman. You are older now - twenty, I believe. Is it not time you accepted man’s estate and the responsibilities of your post?’

  The midday gun boomed distantly. Carriage wheels rumbled along the street below the windows. Shrill native voices screeched in argument, an unintelligible cacophony in the Hindi tongue which Marriott could never master. Hot slithery moisture stained the shirt beneath his armpits. He looked resentfully at the Merchant, trim and tidy in blue broadcloth despite the heat, at the dry wrinkled face.

  He said, ‘Responsibilities rewarded by a niggardly salary. A fellow must try to live like a gentleman, sir, even in this benighted land. Food, wine, furniture, servants, horses - all are devilish costly. My expenses far outrun my income, so I endeavoured--’ He stopped.

  ‘To augment your means at the gaming tables? Unhappily, as I am aware, you decided to test your skill against a gang of sharpers. Cards seldom fall true, and the dice roll oddly in the halls and taverns of the Black Town, Mr Marriott.’ He paused, plucking his lip. ‘May I be so impertinent as to inquire the total of your gaming debts?’

  ‘Around two hundred pagodas,’ sai
d Marriott sulkily.

  Harley, pulled bony fingers, cracked a knuckle. ‘Yes. A considerable sum. Tell me, are you engaged in any trading ventures which might restore your finances?’

  ‘I expect a shipment shortly: wine and bolts of cloth.’

  ‘And how do you propose to reimburse the captain for the goods he will deliver?’

  ‘By a draft on the Carnatic Bank, drawn at three months’ sight.’

  The thin lips parted in a chilly smile. ‘Another gamble, Mr Marriott. Will the captain accept your bond unwarranted? However, I believe the odds are in your favour: the demand for English broadcloth has trebled since the war; and wine up- country commands a ready market.’ Harley drummed the table reflectively. ‘I shall back your bill. Bring me the draft for signature when it is drawn.’

  Marriott stuttered. ‘Sir ... I cannot thank you enough ... I am prodigiously grateful...’

  ‘Reserve your gratitude. I am no speculator, Mr Marriott -I study the market and run no risks. My money is safe, and my commission, let me remind you, will be five per cent.’

  Cunning old scoundrel, Marriott thought: he could easily credit the general belief that the Merchant amassed a fortune. It was highly convenient that a Member of Council should back his bill: the captains of Indiamen were notoriously apt to demand hard cash from junior Writers.

  Harley waved a dismissive hand. ‘Now, to your work.’

  Marriott stood, hesitated, and said, ‘Have I your permission, sir, to move my quarters? Captain Amaury has asked me to share with him a Garden House on Choultry.’

  Harley’s penknife pared the point of a quill already sharpened needle-fine. ‘I regret the prevailing fashion for seeking luxurious houses outside the Fort - Company servants should live next their work. Amaury, eh? He owns a somewhat dishevelled reputation, but I believe him sound at bottom. A gallant officer, indeed. You could be - and are - doing much worse. Yes, Mr Marriott - I grant you leave.’

  Marriott blew a sigh of relief, and crossed a passage to his office. Attendants sitting outside the door rose and touched their foreheads; he entered a large bare room furnished scantily with two tall writing desks and stools, paper-littered tables, ledger-laden bookshelves and an earthenware jar of drinking water mounted on a tripod. A plump individual who perched at one of the desks quirked an eyebrow and laid down his quill.

  ‘Welcome to the office! I marvel you bother to come in at all,’ he observed cheerfully. ‘Yet another rattle, Charles? You look pale as a seasick griffin!’

  ‘Pray shackle your humour, Mr Fane - my brain is too addled to welcome your wit.’ Marriott returned his fellow Writer’s smile. ‘Seriously, William, I have just endured a quizzing from our respected Senior Merchant - and once is enough in a morning.’

  He dipped a cup in the jar, drank thirstily and spluttered. ‘God damn my eyes, what vilely tasting water! Whence has it come?’

  ‘From the well in the compound, as usual, I suppose. Yesterday I saw the water-carriers haul out a decomposing dog. Lends body to the tipple. Why complain? ’Tis better than the green-scummed tank where the Black Tower draws its water. To your labours, Charles!’

  Fane pointed his quill to Marriott’s loaded desk. ‘There’s enough to keep you occupied till sundown - though I doubt you will last the course.’ He chuckled, and resumed his writing.

  Marriott climbed his stool, rested brow on hands and took a paper from the pile. Listlessly he read the archaic wording, hallowed by tradition, which prefaced a bill of lading: ‘Shipped in good order and well conditioned by Nicholas Morse in and upon the good ship Morning Star whereof is Master under God for this present voyage Captain George Heron, now riding at anchor in the roads of Madras, and out of God’s grace bound for Mocha and the Red Sea...’

  He began copying in a ledger a long list of merchandise consigned to the Company’s warehouses. Silence settled on the darkened room, broken only by the scratch of quills on paper, an insistent buzzing of flies, the servants’ swishing fans, a faraway surge of breakers rolling shorewards. Marriott finished his list, sanded the paper, started another. Endless copying, he mused: dull, soul-breaking work, the monotony enough to drive a fellow mad. Time stretched drearily ahead, long sweltering months, dirt and dust and disease which ended too often in death. Within two years he had seen it all: the gay companion of an evening’s roistering dead by dawn, buried at sundown, forgotten before a week was out.

  India. A punishment worse than the gallows for his single thoughtless crime, an ill-judged blow in a drunken brawl and a corpse splayed on the cobbles. Banished to Hindostan, a felon fled from justice - like many others in the Company and out: half the men in Madras had made England too hot to hold them. None but the damned accepted service in the Company - the last resort of ruined profligates, a dumping ground for broken officers, for debtors and well-born bastards who inconvenienced noble families.

  Pensively he studied Fane’s good-humoured face, round and rosy as an apple, and mentally revised his wholesale condemnation. Not all of them sprang from the dregs: many, like Fane, embarked for the East untainted, ambitious for no more than an honest living; and administered the Company’s business without thought of extraneous reward. Even Harley, who shook the pagoda tree at every chance, was immaculate in public affairs, impervious to bribery and the various forms of corruption rampant in a concern whose ultimate goal was money. The good probably outweighed the bad: the Company had at least carved islands of security and order - Madras, Calcutta and Bombay - from a country swamped in anarchy and bloodshed.

  A messenger entered noiselessly, touched fingers to brow and said, ‘Burra Sahib sending salaams, sahib.’

  ‘Deuce take it!’ Marriott swore. ‘I have almost made these cost books tally! What dos the old boy want?’ He tugged his cravat tighter, patted the folds - Harley was captious about his juniors’ dress - and presented himself in the Merchant’s office.

  ‘The Osterley has been signalled off Chingleput; she should berth at Madras tomorrow provided the wind holds fair. Pray board her on arrival, Mr Marriott, check the captain’s manifests and arrange transhipment of all cargo consigned in the Company’s name. You may take Mr Fane and the head clerk to assist you.’ Marriott’s depression lifted. This was a welcome task, a break in the deadly routine, a chance to see new faces, discuss the gossip and latest news - though six to eight months stale - from a land that seemed a million miles away. He smiled happily.

  ‘May I have authority to use the accommodation boat, sir?’

  ‘I regret you may not. The Governor’s boat is bespoke for certain distinguished passengers: General Sir John Wrangham and his family. The Directors, I understand, have appointed him to command at Fort St George. A testy gentleman, by all accounts, unlikely to welcome the wetting which you will certainly receive in an ordinary masoolah.’ Harley tugged a watch from his fob. ‘Nearing two, and time for dinner. You have leave to close the office, Mr Marriott.’

  Marriott stood on the foreshore and tried to estimate the breakers’ strength.

  Half a mile out, like rocks in a sunflecked sea, hulls and spars of shipping flocked the roads: a naval frigate, trim and lean, black gun ports chequering the primrose stripes on her sides; brigantines in the Sumatra trade; a Danish barque bringing indigo and spice from Tranquebar; a host of country craft, high-pooped dhows from Cochin and Malabar, lateen-rigged piraguas and fishing boats. Anchored beyond the farthest an Indiaman lifted her masts, dominant as a ship of the line and almost as heavily gunned. Sailors crawled on the yards, antlike figures silhouetted against a brazen sky.

  A masoolah boat rocked in the swell at the water’s edge: a lunatic open coffin five yards long, two wide and five feet deep, constructed from broad anjali wood planks bound together by coco-palm fibre. A foot-thick layer of grass on the bottom partly hid the alarming sight of water breaching the seams. At the stern was a rickety platform where the steersman stood. Thwarts for rowers in pairs crossed the boat at regular intervals; passengers sat on a plank below the
steersman.

  Marriott surveyed the thunderous wall of water which curved and broke a few yards out and spurted hissing tentacles. He pulled a boat cloak closer round his shoulders. ‘A moderate swell,’ he stated. ‘We may not, God willing, be upset. The longer we look the worse it appears - let us embark. William, you go first.’ A boatman mounted Fane upon his back and carried him through the shallows. The clerk followed, an apprehensive Hindoo clutching manifests and lading bills wrapped in a canvas bag. Marriott slipped from his carrier’s bare brown shoulders and tumbled awkwardly aboard. The steersman mounted his platform, lashed his steering oar; six rowers manned the thwarts, their shining chocolate bodies naked save for loincloths. The steersman shaded his eyes, and keenly examined the surf.

  Marriott, as often before, wondered that so fragile a contraption should challenge the spume-ridged precipice that hurtled shoreward like a soaring mountain, to topple in a roar of foam. The steersman on his platform watched the rollers break and boom in a furious cannonade.

  He flung an arm aloft and yelled at the top of his voice.

  ‘Ya-lee! Ya-lee!’

  Rowers heaved on the oars in quick jerky strokes. The masoolah leaped at a sweeping cliff; the bows climbed skywards. Marriott gripped the gunnel, closed his eyes, heard the bellow of angry water, felt the strakes shift beneath his feet and sea-foam lash his face. The boat lurched wickedly, poised on the seething crest, the crew rowing helter-skelter and chanting above the din. She pitched down a vertical slope like a speeding sleigh. The steersman grinned, exposing reddened, betel-stained teeth, and urged the rowers on. Knee-deep water swilled beneath the thwarts.

  Fane wrung out his cloak. ‘God damn my blood!’ he said shakily. ‘I never get used to this!’ The clerk’s coppery face wore a greenish tinge; the edge of a wave had flicked the turban from his head; his cotton robe was soaked and clung to his skin.

  ‘Two more to come,’ said Marriott soberly. ‘The middle surf is usually the worst.’