East of the Sun Page 11

  “Do you know her? Or was it the old matchmaker?” She turned and tried to smile.

  “I know her. Not very well. We met on my last home leave in England.”

  “Is she pretty?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Is she a good woman?”

  “Yes, I do believe she is.”

  “Tell her I shall set the goondas on her if she isn’t.”

  She gave up trying to move the candle and blew it out. She was a warrior’s daughter. He’d never seen her cry and she didn’t now.

  “She is lucky, Jack.”

  “I hope we’ll be all right,” he said. “The jury is out.”

  “What jury? What do you mean?”

  “Nothing.”

  “My father wants me to get married, too,” she said. She was sitting on the divan in the half-light. Her voice sounded so sad. “He’s fifteen years older than me, but very kind, handsome, suitable.”

  None of us is free to choose, he thought. Rose had been chosen for more or less the same reasons: the right class, right voice, right look, nothing to frighten the horses, his colonel, his men.

  “Do you think I should marry him?”

  “Oh, Sunita, I don’t know. I can’t—” He stopped himself. If she was brave he must be, too.

  I hardly know the woman I’m marrying either. That was how he felt driving home sobbing in the rickshaw alone, and all through the cold sweat of the sleepless night that followed. He hoped he would not feel this way tomorrow.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Port Said, eleven days from Bombay

  When Viva got back to the ship, Mr. Ramsbottom, an acquaintance of Guy’s parents, stood at the bottom of the gangplank. Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead, and he was so angry he could not look at her.

  Viva felt her mouth go dry. “What’s happened? Where’s Guy?”

  “You’d better come down and talk to him,” he said. “I’ll tell you what I think of your behavior later.”

  She followed his squared shoulders and squeaking brogues up the gangplank and then down three flights of narrowing stairs, down into the bowels of the ship where oil-covered sailors looked surprised to see them.

  “You had no right to fob him off onto us,” he flung over his shoulder. “We know his parents a little, but we don’t know him at all. Incredibly embarrassing.” His brogues carried on squeaking, down and down. “I mean, where were you all day? It’s not my job to look after him, and my wife has a heart condition.”

  “Look,” she said. “Tell me quickly, is he all right?”

  “Well, you’ll see him in a minute—he’s being held in the ship’s lock-up, brig, or whatever damn thing they call it.” He was still spitting mad.

  A uniformed officer took them into a small, airless suite of rooms that smelled faintly of urine and Dettol.

  “Ah! Miss Holloway, the chaperone, good of you to drop in.” The duty officer, who was redheaded and high-colored, was sitting behind his desk waiting for them. “My name is Benson. I gather you’ve been out shopping.” The two men exchanged looks full of male understanding about the unreliability of women. “Mr. Glover’s been rather a busy boy during your absence.”

  “Can I see him on his own for a while?” she said.

  Ramsbottom closed his eyes and put the palms of his hands up as if to say, “Nothing to do with me.” The officer unlocked the door.

  When she walked in, Guy was lying on a narrow bunk with his face to the wall. It was hot in the room, 105 degrees or so, but he was huddled in a gray blanket. His overcoat was hanging up on a hook on the wall. She could smell him from the door: alcohol and sweat.

  “Guy,” she said, “what happened?”

  When he turned over, his face looked as if someone had stamped on it: both eyes purple and swollen, his lips twice their normal size. A cut at the corner of his mouth was leaking a watery blood.

  “Why aren’t you in the hospital?” she said.

  He raised his voice and looked beyond her, to the officer who was keeping a protective eye on both of them.

  “I want her away from me,” he said in a slurred voice. “It’s not her fault. Silly old sod Ramsbottom keeps blaming her.”

  “Guy, Guy, shush, please.” As she sat down at the end of the bunk, she was conscious of the door closing softly.

  “Look, he’s gone,” she whispered, “so tell me quickly what happened.”

  “Nothing,” he mumbled. “That’s all you need to know.” He crumpled up his face like a child about to cry, then closed his eyes and seemed to sleep.

  “Miss Holloway,” Benson appeared at the door, “he’s been given a sedative injection, so I don’t think you’ll get much more out of him tonight. If you wouldn’t mind,” he added softly, “we’d like to ask you one or two questions.”

  “Of course.” She touched Guy on the foot. “Are you sure there’s nothing I can do for you?”

  “You can bring me a bottle of bleach,” he said, “and I can drink the lot.” He turned to look at the wall again. “A joke,” he mumbled.

  Even in extremis, he didn’t want her.

  “He has to see a doctor,” she told the duty officer.

  They were sitting in his cubbyhole of an office. Sweat was dripping from Benson’s face onto the blotting paper, and his thin red hair was plastered to his temples. He switched the fan on.

  “Much hotter, isn’t it?” he said pleasantly. “I think they recorded 110 degrees at Bab-el-Mandeb yesterday.”

  “What happened to him?” she said. “Why isn’t he in the san?”

  “Madam.” A steward walked in with a cup of tea for her, and she was dimly aware of the ship moving forward again. “You left your shopping on the deck, Miss Holloway.” When the steward handed her the parcel with her new notebook and twist of frankincense inside, she felt a fresh wave of shame. This was all her fault; she should never have left him alone.

  “What happened?” she said for the third time to the officer when they were alone again. He still didn’t answer.

  “His eyes are so swollen,” she said. “He must see a doctor.”

  “Absolutely.” He scratched his damp forehead. “I’ll organize one right away, but what we’d most like to do is move him back to his cabin.”

  “Wouldn’t it be better if he was in the sanatorium?”

  Benson started to shuffle some papers. As he uncapped his pen and found the form he was looking for, she found herself wondering whether she could ever love a man with ginger hair on his knees.

  “Well, it’s a bit complicated.” He swiveled his chair around to face her. “While you were out shopping, or sightseeing, or whatever you were doing, Mr. Glover attacked and then insulted one of our passengers.” His pale eyes watched her take this in. “An Indian passenger, name of Azim. They’re a prominent Muslim family from the north. Mr. Azim apprehended Glover in his cabin with a pair of cuff links and a small silver ornamental sword in his coat pocket. A scuffle ensued, nothing too serious at first, but then, according to Azim, one moment they were chatting conversationally and the next Mr. Glover hauled off and punched Mr. Azim hard in the face and then in the ear. Azim was in the san for five hours; they’ve discharged him now. At the moment, he says he does not want to press charges. That may change.”

  Sweat broke out on her own forehead; she could feel some dripping down her dress. “Who beat Guy up?” she said.

  “Well, that’s the point, we don’t think anybody did. Your boy was seen approximately half an hour later by two members of staff, banging his own head against the stern railings.”

  “Oh good Lord!” She stared at Benson in disbelief. “Why?”

  “We don’t know, but now we have to sort out the best way of dealing with him. You can appreciate that with roughly two hundred and fifty other first-class passengers on board, we’ll have to put our thinking caps on. But as a matter of absolute fact,” Benson put the cap back on his pen and looked at her again, “he said he did it for you. Something about being in lo
ve with you and voices telling him to do it.”

  A large pipe gurgled above her head like a giant stomach, and the Dettol and urine smell seemed to move toward her.

  Benson’s face looked carefully blank.

  “This is madness,” she said.

  “Well, it may be,” said Benson, “but assuming that Azim doesn’t press charges, and to be frank, your young man will be extremely lucky if he doesn’t, here are our options: do we get the police involved, which could mean you disembarking and hanging around in Suez for an indefinite period; do we keep him locked up here and cause a scandal; or do we take the chance that it won’t happen again? What do you think? You know him best. And technically, I suppose, he is yours, although, may I be frank, I’m surprised that his parents gave so much responsibility to someone of your age.”

  She looked at him for a moment, trying to think. Her head had started to ache and her mouth was still dry from the grenadines she’d drunk what seemed like days and days ago.

  “Do you know Frank Steadman?” she said at last. “He’s one of the medical officers on board. I don’t know him well, but I’d like to talk to him before I make up my mind; he could check Mr. Glover over at the same time.”

  “That sounds like a very good idea.” The duty officer looked so relieved he actually smiled. “Worse things happen at sea and all that. What if we arrange for Mr. Glover to be taken back to his cabin tonight? I could arrange for Dr. Steadman to meet you there.”

  “Thank you,” she said. Her headache was starting to make her feel sick, and she was worried that soon she might get a migraine.

  “Just one more thing,” he said as she was picking up her bags. “I wouldn’t tell anybody about this incident if I were you. Ships are funny places: rumors, fears spread like wildfire. I’ve said the same thing to Mr. Ramsbottom and he agrees.”

  “I won’t say anything,” she said.

  “It wouldn’t look very good for you either,” he added slyly. “It wasn’t perhaps the wisest thing to leave him alone like that. It could have been very much more serious.”

  “Yes,” she said. The right side of her face was starting to tingle; his outline was breaking up into wavy lines.

  They looked at each other warily. She walked toward the door and closed it behind her.

  It took two sailors to bundle Guy, still groggy from the sedatives, back to bed in his own cabin. When they left, Viva bolted the door behind them and collapsed in a chair. Guy fell asleep almost instantly, purple eyelids twitching, the blood on his lips congealing.

  As she watched him sleep she felt a cold contempt for herself. She didn’t like him, that was true, but it was dreadful of her to have left him behind.

  Before they’d parted, Benson had warned her again that she could be held responsible if any legal charges were pressed. When she asked him what that meant, he had told her “it was not his part of ship” to explain the full legal implications to her, but he’d implied that they could be serious.

  She slept lightly, and then a soft knock on the door made her spring to her feet.

  “Can I come in? It’s Dr. Steadman. Frank.”

  Relief flooded through her like new blood.

  “Come in and lock the door behind you,” she whispered.

  He was back in his white uniform and seemed like an entirely different person: professional, impersonal. She was grateful for that: in her current state of mind, jokiness or familiarity would have been unbearable. He sat down on the chair beside Guy’s bunk, a small leather bag at his feet.

  “Don’t wake him for a second,” he said. “Tell me what happened.”

  When she opened her mouth to speak, the boy’s swollen eye flickered.

  “Ah, Doctor,” he said through his cut lip. “Good of you to drop in.” When he tried to sit up, she caught the smell of his stale air, his sweat and vomit.

  “Stay where you are for a second.” Frank moved closer to him and gently touched the corner of the boy’s eye. “I want to have a look at this.”

  Viva noticed the boy’s face softening, the faint beginnings of a smirk from his cut lip. He seemed to be enjoying the attention.

  Frank rolled back his sleeve on an expanse of brown arm. He scrutinized the boy’s face.

  “You were lucky that whatever hit you missed your eye,” said Frank. “What was it, by the way?”

  “A thunderbolt.”

  “What kind of a thunderbolt?”

  “The usual kind.”

  “I can’t help you if you’re going to play silly buggers with me,” Frank said softly. “It looks like someone gave you an almighty punch. Was that it?”

  “My business, not yours.” The boy turned his face to the wall.

  “Look,” Frank said evenly, as if the boy hadn’t spoken at all, “before you go to sleep, I’d like to clean up your lip and put something on your eye to take the swelling down and then, maybe,” he looked at Viva for permission, “I could talk to Guy on his own. Man to man.”

  “Of course,” said Viva. She picked up the boy’s bloody shirt and said, “I’ll give these to Guy’s steward. And tell him,” she gave Frank a significant look, “not to bother us for a while. Benson said I should lock the door behind me when I leave.”

  “Come back in about half an hour,” said Frank, “and then perhaps you could come to the surgery with me and get something to help Guy sleep.”

  Numb and still woozy from her headache, Viva walked quickly down the corridor hoping when she passed Rose and Tor’s cabin that she wouldn’t see them.

  A heavily made-up man wearing a frock suddenly appeared from one of the cabin doors. He tittered when he bumped into her and said “Pardon!” in a silly voice. More people appeared from behind him, giggling and self-conscious, dressed in feather boas and clown suits.

  “Rotters,” shouted a middle-aged woman dressed as a crossword puzzle. “Wait for me.”

  “Oh, diddums,” the clown shouted back and then he smiled at Viva, yellow fangs, red lipstick. For a few confused seconds they seemed part of her developing migraine, and then she remembered it was the Eccentrics party that night. She had said she might go with Tor and Rose. For the next few hours at least, a lot of people from their corridor would conveniently have deserted it for the ballroom on A deck.

  She’d reached the purser’s office. The clock outside said eight thirty-five; the lights were on inside. To fill in time and to hide from the partygoers, now shrieking with laughter in the corridors, she went in to ask whether there was a letter for her.

  The clerk handed her a buff-colored envelope with a telegram in it.

  It was from the Pioneer Mail and Indian Weekly. “Sorry,” it read. “Insufficient funds to take on another correspondent in our Bombay office this month, but do come and see us if you are passing by.” It was signed Harold Warner. He was an old friend of Mrs. Driver who’d been sure he’d be able to find “some little job” for her.

  “How was your day, Miss Holloway?” the purser, a thickset Scotsman with a relentless smile, was locking up his glass cage. “Did ye enjoy your quick trip to Cairo?”

  “Great fun,” she said. She couldn’t even begin to explain how bad it felt.

  And now another lifeline had been cut.

  “D’you want to put that in here?”

  “Thank you.” She threw the crumpled telegram into the wastepaper basket.

  “So, will you be after the silly party tonight?”

  “No,” she said. “Not tonight. I’ve had enough excitement for one day.”

  She glanced at her watch. She could hardly see the time. She’d been gone for ten minutes and would go back in ten.

  The worst thing about being on a ship was there was nowhere to hide when things went wrong. If she went to her cabin, Miss Snow would be there, no doubt brimming with good advice and I-told-you-sos. If she went into supper, she’d have to face the Ramsbottoms. The only person she felt temporarily safe with was Frank.

  Walking slowly back to the cabin, she thought a
bout him. He seemed so lighthearted, even faintly flirtatious, something to do with his sleepy green eyes, the smile.

  But if Rose was right and a brother had been killed at Ypres, he’d suffered and now perhaps concealed his pain too well. She wondered if the brother had been killed outright, or had to take his chances in one of the ad hoc medical centers on the battlefield steeped in mud and blood, and whether, as a consequence, the luxury of this ship angered Frank—he’d joked once or twice about the rows of passengers that waited for him outside his surgery in the mornings to have ears syringed and smelling salts renewed.

  Mad-making, when you thought about it. She wondered if he ever talked about it, and somehow doubted it.

  He was still sitting in a chair by Guy’s bed when she walked in. He’d placed a shirt over the cabin’s wall light so that the room was darker and full of shadows.

  “How is he?” she said.

  “Agitated for a while,” he whispered. “But fast asleep now; he will be till morning.”

  “Can we talk here?”

  “Well, it’s not ideal,” he said, “but at the moment, I can’t think of a better place.”

  There was a silence for a while.

  “How old are you?” he asked suddenly.

  “I’m twenty-eight,” she said.

  “You don’t look it.”

  “Don’t I?” She didn’t like lying to him but it seemed important to keep her story straight.

  “Do you know anything about his parents?”

  “I met an aunt once at my interview. She said something about his father being in the tea business near Assam. Originally they’d hired an older chaperone, but she let them down.”

  “They should never have put you in this situation.” He ran his hand through his hair and shook his head.

  “What situation?”

  “Would you mind if we went into the bathroom?” he said. “I don’t want him to overhear.”

  They crept into the bathroom together where they sat awkwardly at either end of the bath.