East of the Sun Read online

  And Tor, who knew exactly what she was thinking, clutched her hand. Marriage was such a huge step in the dark; terrifying actually, when you thought about it.

  Seven hours later, Tor, Viva, Rose, and a group of friends from the ship were in the Windsor Bar, in Shepheard’s Hotel in Cairo. They were sunk deep into chairs made of old barrels, with piles of shopping bags full of what Frank called “ill-considered trifles” all around them. For Tor, a piece of embroidery and a pith helmet made with ostrich feathers around the brim. For Rose, a copper tray for her new home and a badly cured high-smelling belt for her husband-to-be, which she was already worried about. Viva had bought a dusty notebook with a camel on its cover and a twist of paper with some frankincense in it, which she said made a lovely smell when burned.

  “Isn’t it heaven being on terra-cotta again?” said Tor, looking luxuriously around the hotel’s bar.

  “Darling, I think the phrase is terra firma,” said Nigel.

  Nigel, the young civil servant, was one of their new best friends. He had lank sandy hair and a languid body. His pale fine-featured face quivered with intelligence.

  “I would adore a lime and soda,” Rose told Frank, who was ordering.

  Tor thought Frank looked wonderful out of uniform. He was wearing a crumpled linen suit. She liked men who didn’t try too hard with their clothes.

  “A pink lady for me,” said Tor. “Do try one,” she said to Rose. “They’ve got grenadine at the bottom and brandy on top and they taste like pear drops—you’ll love them. I say, it’s not every day you have breakfast in Port Said and supper in Cairo.”

  Tor’s hair felt gritty from the train, her legs ached from the camel ride that had made them all shriek earlier—one had spat at Nigel straight in the eye—but she felt happy in a keyed-up sort of way. There was Frank, smiling his sleepy smile and looking relieved to be off-duty; her friends, Rose and Nigel and Viva, all drinking grenadines now. Through the window, she could see red sky and the sun setting through palm trees with actual dates on them.

  “See all this.” Nigel waved his glass toward the Windsor’s antique carpets and polished floor, the stuffed animal heads on the wall. “It was once a very smart English officers’ club; it’ll soon be a piece of history.”

  “Nigel is frightfully clever,” Rose explained to Viva. “He—”

  “Nigel, don’t start all that hell in a handcart stuff,” Tor pleaded. “We’re having a jolly day out.”

  “But it’s true, though, isn’t it?” Nigel turned to Viva.

  When Viva looked at him and smiled sadly without saying anything, Tor thought how beautiful she was today, her scarlet dress, the barbaric necklace, her loose hair looking artistic and disheveled and vaguely gypsy-like. She was an original, Tor decided, and admired the way she never looked as if she tried too hard. Frank was looking at her, too, both men waiting eagerly for her to talk.

  “Another grenadine, please,” Tor told Frank. “Too delicious for words.”

  The waiter arrived, plump and smiling with a napkin over his arm. They ordered far more than they needed: dishes of fat olives and plump little tomatoes, chickpeas, hummus, and mouth-watering mounds of chicken and tabbouleh, all washed down with some local wine.

  Frank insisted that they taste the roz b laban, Egyptian rice pudding with raisins and cinnamon. “Like Mother never made.”

  “Teach us a good Egyptian toast, Mustafa,” Frank had said to the waiter.

  “May a camel arise from your arse” came the bawdy reply.

  Tor loved the sound of Frank laughing next to her. His tanned hand around his glass. When he turned to talk to Viva, she watched them from the corner of her eye. There was a stillness about Viva that she envied. She kept herself apart. But hang on, he must have made a joke for she suddenly seemed to glow, and then she leaned forward, saying something emphatic and mischievous to him that, irritatingly, Tor couldn’t catch but which made him laugh.

  Why do I never understand this? thought Tor, feeling her happiness drain away. That charming people charm everyone—they’re not just people that clever old you has discovered. Even the dreaded Paul had absolutely fascinated Mummy.

  “Have one of these.” Viva offered Tor a dish of olives, deliberately involving her again. “And tell me if Frank is lying to me. He tells me some archaeologists have just dug up this new pharaoh’s tomb at Moukel al Tes and found inside it mountains of old hairnets, tweezers, and pots of face oil.”

  “He’s probably lying.” Tor didn’t mean to sound so sour.

  “I’m not.” When Frank turned round to look at Tor, she was happy again.

  “Why wouldn’t good looks be as important to them as to us? We didn’t invent vanity.”

  “I feel a quote coming on,” said Viva. “Hang on.” She thought for a moment. “‘I am convinced that nothing in a man’s life has as much importance as the conviction that he is attractive or unattractive.’ Tolstoy.”

  “Perfect,” said Frank. “My case rests.”

  Tor, who had never read Tolstoy, gave a knowing smile.

  Frank turned away from Tor again. “Where are you going to live when you get to India?” he asked Viva.

  She hesitated. “I’m not sure yet. I have a few introductions. I’ll be living on my wits for a while.”

  She picked up a dish of Turkish delight and handed them around.

  “Will you live there on your own?”

  “Probably.”

  Everybody waited for her to say more, but she didn’t.

  “Do you think you’ll go north—isn’t that where you grew up?” Nigel was intrigued, too.

  “Maybe,” she said. “I haven’t decided.”

  That was the secret, be more mysterious. She blabbed to everyone.

  “So,” Nigel turned to Tor in the silence that followed, “what are your plans post Bombay?”

  “Well…” Tor was about to be elusive, too, when Rose interrupted.

  “She’s my chief bridesmaid,” she said loyally, “and bestest friend in the whole world.”

  “And is this a full-time job?” Frank teased.

  “Yes,” Rose said, “I’m hideously demanding.”

  Tor had never heard her role in India sound so mundane, so childish.

  “As soon as Rose is hitched,” she blew out some cigarette smoke, “I’ll be off like a shot, traveling, having adventures and so forth.”

  “Oh!” Rose stood up. She looked as if she’d been slapped. “Do excuse me,” she said. She pushed back her chair and walked off in the direction of the ladies’ room.

  “Is she all right?” Viva mouthed to Tor.

  “I’m sure she is.” Tor was puzzled. Rose had never in her life walked off in a huff. “I’ll go and see her. Maybe she’s not feeling very well.”

  Rose was standing by an ornately tiled washbasin crying when Tor walked into the ladies’ room.

  “What on earth’s the matter, Rose?” she said.

  “You.”

  “Me? Why?” Tor had never seen her so angry.

  “I’m sorry, Tor,” Rose said. “But I thought you were a little bit excited about being a bridesmaid and that when we got to India we would spend some time together enjoying things. Certainly that’s what your mother and mine thought. But now, you seem completely bored by the whole thing. And, well, I’m starting to think…to think…”

  “What, Rose?”

  “That you couldn’t give a damn about it.”

  And suddenly Tor was shouting at Rose, because the whole day was turning out to be such a disappointment and she was absolutely fed up with being on the edge of everybody’s dreams.

  “Oh, so is my sole function in life to be your wet nurse?”

  “No! No! No! But all you talk about now is going away and having adventures.” Rose gave a great whoop of despair and tears ran down her face. “Can’t you see, can’t you see at all how strange this will be for me?”

  For a few seconds, they both glared at each other, breathing heavily. Outsid
e the iron bars on the bathroom windows, they could hear a donkey braying and the sound of men shouting in foreign languages.

  “Oh, Rose”—Tor put her arms around her, stroked her hair—“I’m so sorry. I really and truly am. I was showing off to Frank, and it’s just that sometimes other people seem to have such interesting lives and I want one, too.”

  “You’ll have one, Tor, I know you will.”

  “Yes.” Tor straightened Rose’s hair. “I’ll have one.” Her voice seemed to bounce in a hollow way off the tiled walls.

  “Friends again?”

  “Yes.” Tor hugged her. “Friends. In fact, if you’re not careful, I’ll be on that honeymoon with you. Shall we go back and join the others?”

  “Yes,” said Rose. “Sorry if I was a bit of an idiot, but it is so strange.”

  They walked back to their table. Nigel was sitting on his own reading a book of Arabic poetry. Frank and Viva had disappeared.

  “Where is everyone?” asked Tor.

  “Gone,” he said. “While you were out, a chap came from the Kaisar and told Viva to get back to the ship as soon as possible. Something about an incident on board.”

  “Where’s Frank?”

  “He went with her.”

  “What about us?” said Tor.

  “He’s ordered a car to take us to the ship.”

  “How thoughtful.” Tor felt her heart turn to stone again. “He’s thought of everything.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Poona

  “Sunita,” Jack Chandler called through the door. He was standing on her little veranda with its clay pots filled with bougainvillea and geraniums. Around each pot was a circle of damp where she had watered them earlier. He put his forehead against the door. Sunita, Sunita, I’m so sorry.

  Behind the door, he could hear the gentle percussion of her bangles as she walked toward him.

  “Jack.” She was smiling at him so wholeheartedly. She held nothing back. That was one of the things he most admired about her. She was wearing one of his favorite saris: pale green with a faint mauve underneath, reminding him of the sweet peas in his mother’s garden in Dorset.

  She put the palms of her hands together and made a namaste.

  “My sweet pea,” he said.

  “Sweet pea?” She looked confused.

  “A beautiful flower.”

  He followed her trail of attar of roses into the undistinguished room where his life had been changed forever. Their bed, a low divan with a white sheet on it and a mosquito net, was there and the small brass table with its ornate lamp. Beside the bed, she’d already laid out the bottle of brandy he bought at the mess, his favorite cheroots, and a carafe of water.

  Her hair fell in a flood of silk as she leaned forward to fill his glass.

  “You look tired,” she said. “Shall I get you something to eat? I went to the market earlier and bought two beautiful mangoes: alfonsos.”

  Sunita was a mango connoisseur.

  “Just a drink,” he said. He was too nervous to eat. “Thank you, Sunita.”

  Watching her fingers prise the skin away from the fruit, he was horribly aware of what he must soon lose: her gentle presence, her tender mouth, the proudness of her bearing. She was a Rajput, one of the warrior class, with all the gentleness of the truly strong.

  “Sunita, I…” He held her hand and turned it over, tracing the shape of the pink pads under her fingers. She closed her eyes and smoothed the sides of his hair.

  “Plenty of time to talk when you’ve had a drink.”

  While he drank the brandy, night fell outside her window, as suddenly as it always did in India, like a fire curtain coming down on a play. Light then dark.

  They’d been together now for three years. She’d been introduced to him by a fellow officer who’d been going home to England, and who said she was a very superior type, not a street girl, but a direct descendant of the Nautch girls who had so captivated Englishmen with their wonderful dancing and singing, their refined ways of enthralling men, before India had, as he put it, “become almost as doily and prissy as the British and clamped down on them.”

  Before her there’d been a few flings at Sandhurst with sporty girls, mostly army daughters, who’d been almost as shy as he was; then a brief fling with a junior officer’s wife in Jaipur. She was a short, plump, lonely woman with all her children in English boarding schools and her husband away for months at a time. She’d had the most wonderful arse—unfashionably plump, and round and high—and that was all he remembered about her now. And there had been fumbles with other women, but nothing like this.

  “Here.” Sunita took off his shoes and bathed his feet.

  “Sunita…” He had meant not to be a cad: to say what he had to say, make his salaams, and leave.

  “Here.” As she unbuttoned his shirt, he smelled his own sweat. The proper thing was to tell her immediately and not sleep with her.

  But he was hard now, and helpless. The smell of her, the swish of her hair against his chest; the sense of having been cut adrift from himself, from all the stuffy apparatus of cantonment life with its games and uniforms and sense of being on show, made this room part of what it took for him to feel alive.

  Her skin felt soft and slightly damp beneath his hands. He could feel her ribs under the silk of her sari, as he lowered her down on the bed, and then her long narrow waist and then his lips on hers. And now he was floating with her again, floating in the dark: happy and helpless.

  “Wait! Wait.” She put her hand over his mouth. “I have some music for you. Shall I put?”

  The wireless gramophone had been one of his most successful presents to her. He’d bought it on his first home leave, in a shop off the Camden Passage in London. She’d opened the box it came in so reverently, with such tenderness, that it brought tears to his eyes. He gave it to her, but she gave it back to him many times over by introducing him to Ustad Hafiz Ali Khan, who’d just begun to make his recordings at the Tiger Studio in Bombay. She’d introduced him to the richness of the Indian ragas—the sacred music used to greet dawn and sunset, summer, spirits and fire. He remembered the night he’d put on Madame Butterfly for her and how they’d laughed after a few bars when she’d put her hands over her ears and said, “Stop! It’s horrible—like cats going oooohhhhh,” and she’d howled in real pain.

  But now she said, “Listen!” She put on the music and then lifted her arms above her head and briefly made a snake of her body. Generously, gracefully she had shared that body with him.

  Now she had slipped under the sheet and was gently massaging his neck, singing, “Chhupo na chhupo hamari sajjano”—do not hide from me, my beloved—softly into his ear. It was their song.

  Patient as a mother, she’d nursed him through the days when for all his easy manners, his correctness in the outside world, he’d been a peasant in the ways of lovemaking, with a peasant’s tongue. Like a farm boy in rut, speaking the language of the squaddie because he hadn’t known the words then. I want to fuck you. Fancy a root? Are you ready for it?

  She’d watch him in the dark with her beautiful seaweed-colored eyes, playing him like a virtuoso. Sometimes she massaged him and watched him rise, making him feel that she was the source of every exquisite sensation he’d ever felt, stretched out and prolonged with appalling sweetness until she released him.

  She was refined, beautiful, well-educated, well-connected, even: her father, a liberal cultivated man, was a lawyer in Bombay, but she was not wife material. Never a wife. It wasn’t as easily explained as snobbery, although, and he had faced this squarely, snobbery did come into it. The problem was this: he loved his regiment and his fellow officers with a passion that bordered on the obsessional. No woman, Indian or English, would ever really understand what they meant to him, and as a group they strongly disapproved of fellows who took on native women and went what they called “jungli.”

  All of the men he knew were, to some extent, split in their natures: privately bawdy and schoolboyis
h, publicly courtly and reserved with women. Sunita had healed the split. But even if they had approved of her, some part of him knew he would never have married her. In the end they were just too different.

  With my body I thee worship. No problem with that. With my soul I thee wed.

  That was the rub. If he had a soul (which he sometimes seriously doubted) it had been, in a hundred thousand ways, forged so differently from hers. In the end and notwithstanding the painful night ahead, it would be so much easier to marry a girl like Rose.

  “You’re very quiet tonight,” she said when they’d made love. “What are you thinking?”

  With one fluid gesture, she got up and wrapped herself in her sari.

  He put on the silk dressing gown she kept for him there and put his arms around her.

  “Sunita, I’m getting married soon,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

  He could feel her breath changing under his hands.

  In the silence that followed, he heard the fan churn, the sound of an insect buzzing outside, wheels turning in the street outside.

  “I knew you would,” she said at last.

  She went over to the table where a candle was dropping wax on the postcard he had sent her from England, three days after he’d met Rose. It was an absurd card—he was ashamed of it now—a duck trying to ride a bicycle. She’d kept it like a holy relic just as she’d kept everything else he’d ever given her: a handbag, a toy car, a vial of Evening in Paris scent, still in its cardboard box. All the presents placed on a shelf where candles were lit in front of Shiva.

  “When is the wedding?”

  Her back was graceful, erect.

  “Next month.”