East of the Sun Page 12

  Guy’s paisley silk bathrobe was hung behind the door. A grubby-looking shaving brush lay in the sink, hairs stuck in the congealed soap. The steward hadn’t been in to clean up.

  “Look,” said Frank, “before we start you must understand that this is in confidence, and I don’t have all the answers.”

  “I understand.”

  “Can I speak openly?”

  “Of course.”

  Frank didn’t seem to know where to begin, or look. “To start with, how do you get on with Guy?”

  “Honestly?”

  “Yes,” he glanced at her quickly and smiled, “always.”

  “I can’t bear him.”

  “Well, that’s pretty unequivocal,” he said.

  “Look, I know boys of his age struggle with conversation,” she said, “but he’s barely uttered a word for the last two weeks, and when he does, I get the feeling he hates me.”

  Frank thought about this for a while. “He doesn’t hate you,” he said at last. “He hates himself.”

  “But why?”

  “That, I’m not sure of. Have you seen him in his own setting, at school for instance?”

  “Well, I drove down there to pick him up, but when he left all the other boys seemed to be out playing sport. His dormitory was deserted.”

  “That’s pretty unusual, wouldn’t you say? He told me he was leaving school for good.”

  “He was.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “Yes, I do. Look, this is all my fault. I should have said something earlier. He’d taken things from the other boys. I didn’t take it seriously enough.”

  “What did he take?”

  “Not very much, the normal pilfering.”

  “Don’t blame yourself too much,” said Frank. “The thieving might be part of a bigger problem.”

  “Such as?”

  “I’m not sure yet. When you were out of the room he told me he hears voices sometimes. He said they come through his wireless.”

  “But that sounds absolutely—”

  “I know. He also said something about you being his chosen mother. He said he hates his real one now.”

  Viva felt her skin prickle.

  “What should I do?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “I shouldn’t have left him. Do you think he’s dangerous? Will it happen again?”

  Frank put his hand on her shoulder.

  “Here’s the tricky bit, I don’t really know. His reaction did seem quite extreme. Obviously I’ll have to talk to my senior, Dr. Mackenzie, about it, but my instinct is to keep an eye on him for a couple of days. I’ll attempt to persuade him to come into the san; we’ll try and keep the lid on things. It’s only ten days to Bombay and the weather will be too hot for anyone to do much in the Indian Ocean.”

  “What’s the alternative?”

  “To put him off the ship at Suez, but then he’d have to wait for his parents to come and that won’t do anything for his state of mind.”

  “What if he won’t go to the san?”

  “Well, the other alternative is to keep him under some form of house arrest in his cabin. They’d fit his door with an extra lock, but how would you feel about that?”

  She shuddered and shook her head. “I honestly don’t know. Did you know that his cabin is right next door to Tor and Rose’s?”

  “No,” he said. “I didn’t.”

  “Shall I tell them?”

  “Not for the time being. No point in frightening them.”

  “What would you do if you were me?” she asked.

  “I’d review the situation first thing tomorrow. I’ll talk to Dr. Mackenzie; you won’t be left alone with this. And then,” he stood up, looked at his watch, “it’s ten-thirty, so I’d go upstairs and find someone to have a drink with. You could do with a break.” He looked at her again. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes. Why do you ask?”

  “You look very pale.”

  “I’m fine, thank you.” She didn’t want to tell him about the migraine.

  “It must have been a shocking day for you.”

  “No. No. It’s all right.” She took a step back from him. It was so instinctive not to ask for help, a habit she couldn’t break. She shook his hand formally. “But thank you,” she said. “You’ve been most helpful.”

  He smiled at her, the smile that made the other girls go weak at the knees.

  “Part of the P and O service, madam.” He was back to his bantering self again.

  He turned off one of the lights in the cabin and straightened the blankets over Guy. She collected her wrap and her bag.

  “Don’t worry too much,” he said. “I’m sure he’ll be all right.” He brushed against her arm as he locked the cabin door behind them. She stepped backwards into a figure in the corridor. It was Tor. She was dressed in a black-hooded cloak, with a rope tied around her neck like a noose. Attached to the noose was a bottle with the label “The last drop” written on it. When she saw them both she stopped smiling.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb

  October 28, 1928

  Dearest Mummy,

  I picked up your letter in Cairo and was thrilled to hear from you. Mummy, thank you for all the useful information about place cards and flowers and article about corsages. It was kind of you to send it, too, to Jack—I’m sure he can send it on to Ci Ci Mallinson if he finds it all too confusing! I don’t think he’ll think he’s marrying into a monstrous regiment of women, he should be grateful to have a mother-in-law who is so thoughtful.

  It is hot, hot, hot here. Tor and I have put our winter clothes away in the trunk and have brought out our summer clothes. The crew are wearing their white uniforms, and instead of serving us broth in the morning we get ice and melons.

  Mr. Bingley, who is a jute planter and one of dozens of new best friends on the ship, does forty turns around the deck (in flapping shorts) each morning. He announced today that it is now over 100 degrees in the shade. On some night after supper our stewards haul our mattresses on deck—men on one side of the deck, women on the other!!!! The sunsets are out of this world, and though the wider parts of the Suez Canal got rather dull, we’ve now passed the Gulf of Suez, which is only about ten miles wide, and so we can watch the most fascinating sights from the steamer—camels, men in long flowing nighties, women with pots on their heads, and all kinds of biblical scenes.

  I am still taking my kitchen Hindi lessons from Colonel Gorman. Bearer, khana kamre ko makhan aur roti lana, ek gilass pani bhi—bearer, fetch me a glass of water, and butter and jam into the dining room. I’ve probably spelled it all wrong. Tor and I speak it in our cabin and have fits of laughter. Our ladies’ meetings are called bishis.

  Mr. Bingley’s wife, who is v. sweet, has also lent me her “indispensable bible,” viz The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook, written by a Mrs. Steel who’s lived there for ages—full of good info incl. recipes, lists of servants, best places to buy things, etc., so you see I am hard in training for the life of a pukkamem.

  (By the way, Mrs. Steel’s advice on how to deal with awkward servants is to give them a ticking-off, followed by a large dose of castor oil.) Memsahib tum ko zuroor kaster ile pila dena hoga—the memsahib will have to give you castor oil.

  Do try that on Mrs. Pludd and tell me how it goes!

  Darling Mummy, too hot to write any more and the bell has just gone for deck games. I have a million more questions to ask you but will think of them later.

  Your affectionate and devoted daughter,

  Rose

  P.S. Tor not v. well, nothing to worry about, says it’s the heat and she’s feeling much better now. Don’t bother telling Mrs. Sowerby.

  P.P.S. Another fancy-dress party on Saturday night, mind complete blank as to what to go as.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Tor had looked forward to the Arabian Nights party ever since she’d arrived on board. Held on full-moon nights, on the day before the ship slipped into t
he Red Sea, experienced travelers on board said it was one of the highlights of the voyage and she’d worked herself up into a fine froth even thinking about it. Exotic costumes were expected and the dress she’d planned to wear—long, slinky, and made of fine gold silk—begged for a cigarette holder, red lips, and a weary expression. It was a vamp’s dress and any other mother but hers would have flatly forbidden it.

  A few days ago when she’d hung it in the steamy bathroom to get the creases out, she’d literally shivered with anticipation at the sight of it. She’d decided to wear it with a short gold mask, a long rope of pearls, and lipstick. She was to be an Egyptian goddess in it, which one she wasn’t sure of, her knowledge of such things being hazy, but certainly one who was autocratic, splendid, and above the law. Every time she’d thought of the party, she ran a little film in her head in which Frank took off her mask of gold and looked deeply into her eyes. Sometimes he told her she had wonderful eyes, sometimes he simply led her terrified but thrilled down to his cabin where he made a woman of her. And, once again—what was wrong with her?—her mind had raced ahead to babies and houses and photograph albums.

  On the morning before the ball they slept in their cabin and Tor woke early, furious with herself all over again. The gold dress swung limply on a hanger outside her wardrobe door, taunting her now with its idiotic promises. How long, she wondered, would it take her to get it into her fat head that men didn’t like her? The only part of her plan that now appealed was the mask, because she felt so wretched.

  She thumped her pillow and turned over. Jealousy was such a horrible emotion, she decided. From the moment she had seen Viva and Frank leaving the boy’s room it had stolen into her sunny picture like the villain in a Laurel and Hardy film, with pitchfork and gleaming eyes and smoke coming out of his ears.

  The sight of them—so conspiratorial, so somehow changed-looking—had made her accept that Frank, in spite of their jolly turns around the deck, was not, and never had been, the slightest bit interested in her. Why, with the memory of her humiliating attachment to Paul Tattershall so recent in her mind, she’d ever imagined he was, was a complete mystery to her now. But this time, she told herself, squaring her jaw on her pillow, this time she would behave like a grown-up. Stop caring so much had been her stern message to herself over the past few days, simply cut them out of your mind.

  Last night, when their group had met up in the bar for a few pegs, she’d flirted and danced with everyone to show just how fine she was. When Frank had arrived suddenly, had a quick drink, and then left just as suddenly with Viva, she, conscious of Rose shooting her a protective look, had turned away. And laughed nonsensically at something somebody else had said. She’d danced with Nigel, who was a sweetheart but too gentle and poetic for her, and then with Jitu Singh, who, she and Rose agreed, was the most exotic man they’d ever seen. Now, because she’d drunk too much, she had a thumping headache and a horrible taste in her mouth.

  As she looked for some Eno’s salts in the bedside table, she thought for no particular reason of a girl who she’d had a crush on at school who had seemed even then to have some elusive quality that she entirely lacked. The girl’s name was Athena, and she was dark and beautiful and used to spend her school holidays in South America, where her father did important and secret things for the government.

  After the school holidays, most of the girls would get on the train and talk without drawing breath until the train arrived in Cheltenham, where their school was located. All except Athena, who, while they babbled about shrimping in Salcombe or having wizard fun in the Isle of Wight, would sit enticingly silent.

  “Please, Athena,” they’d beg, “tell us where you’ve been.”

  “Buenos Aires,” she might say, in her not quite English accent, and then she’d wait, smiling.

  “And? Come on, Athena, you beast! Tell!”

  “Oh, you know, the usual things: parties, boys.”

  As Tor had waited hungrily with the rest for more scraps that never came, she saw how powerful silence could be and even tried it once herself.

  On a school trip to London she’d forced herself to keep a secret (so important but for the life of her she couldn’t remember what it was now) until Reading at least. But by Didcot, she’d blabbed to Athena, who, to add to the humiliation, had politely raised her eyebrows, and said “Golly” with the same dying fall that her own mother said “Anyway” when she wanted people to get off the phone.

  Another memory surfaced about Athena: when they were out on school trips, and given sandwiches and bars of chocolate to eat at lunch, she kept hers until lunch.

  Tor had usually demolished hers by about a quarter to ten. No self-control, Mother was right about that.

  Viva was like Athena. When Frank had asked her about her plans, she hadn’t babbled helplessly as Tor would have done, or seemed to ask for his approval or advice. She’d merely said “I’m not sure yet,” and Tor could tell he was completely hooked.

  It had been left to Rose and herself to fill in the tantalizing gaps, by telling him that Viva was going to be a writer; that she may or may not go to Simla, where her parents had been killed—nobody knew exactly how—and where there was this mysterious trunk waiting for her, probably filled with jewels and things, and that in the meantime, she would probably try and live on her wits in Bombay.

  Tor’s biggest problem, she decided, was that she had no idea of how to wait: for food, for love, or for people to find her interesting, which she wasn’t.

  Tor, creeping across the cabin in the half-light of dawn, took down the invitation that had been stuck behind a mirror and studied it again.

  Captain and crew have great pleasure, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, champagne and oriental dishes to be served when the moon rises at seven p.m.

  What a horror the whole thing sounded now. She briefly considered the possibility of crying off—Rose could tell people she was in the cabin with a raging fever or Delhi belly, but then Frank might appear, avuncular and kind, with Viva at his side. Also—she glanced at Rose, calmly asleep in her bunk—this time she really didn’t feel like involving Rose. She was just so tired of being her ugly sister, the eternal gooseberry, the child with its nose pressed wistfully against the window of love when all Rose had to do was look at a man and he fell fainting at her feet.

  But darling, Rose might reasonably have said, you hardly know him, or she might speak to her more generally about shipboard romances, which would make her feel slightly common.

  I melt, I rage, I burn.

  Hard to imagine Rose melting, raging, or burning. Life just seemed to happen to her, maybe because she was so pretty. I try too hard.

  Her groan woke Rose up. She sat up in her lace nightdress and stretched her perfect arms toward the ceiling.

  “Um, divine,” she said sleepily, “I had the strangest dream that I had this little baby and it was riding an elephant in the tiniest topi you’ve ever seen and everyone was saying it was too early but I was so happy with it.”

  “Gosh.”

  In the silence that followed Rose said, “Oh golly, it’s that Arabian Nights thing tonight. Can we have a clothes chat?”

  “Sorry, but no,” Tor said. “I’m asleep. Good night.”

  “All right, but do you think my floaty pink thing will do if I use the shawl part as a veil?”

  “Couldn’t be less interested. Sorry.”

  “You actually owe me this, Tor, because you were very noisy last night—you were thrashing around like some mad fish in a net.”

  “I’m asleep, Rose, sorry. No further bulletins.”

  It isn’t as if Frank is even madly good-looking, she thought as soon as she heard Rose breathing regularly again. A lovely smile, a quick wit, but not quite tall enough for leading-man material and slightly bandy-legged if one was being absolutely brutal. And Mummy wouldn’t have been thrilled about him being a doctor, although he wasn’t really a ship’s doctor; he was, when he got to India, going up north to do research into some
thing horrible.

  And if he preferred Viva, fine. She wasn’t going to make a meal of it or even give them the satisfaction of a scene. If living well was the best revenge, that’s what she’d do tonight. Dance and flirt and not care, not care at all. There were plenty of men who would dance with her.

  She switched on the fan above her bed, finished the glass of water beside her bed, still half listening for sounds that might or might not be coming from the cabin next door. Why they’d been in that cabin was still a complete mystery to her. Where was Guy Glover, come to think of it? She hadn’t seen him for days. When she’d asked Viva about why she’d rushed back to him, she’d laughed it off as a false alarm.

  Rose had noticed nothing, but with only six days to go before they got to Bombay, her mind was understandably caught up with meeting Jack Chandler, another reason why she shouldn’t be burdened with the trivial business of why Frank didn’t want her. It was a shipboard romance. She’d done it again: woven a ridiculous fantasy out of nothing.

  The Arabian Nights party was in full swing when Tor went up on deck later that night. The sky flamed with the colors of coral and claret, and all the faces of the partygoers were bathed in its light. The crew had scurried around all day, wrapping tables in pink cloths and piling fruits—figs, mangoes, pawpaw, and sweetmeats—and Turkish delights on the tables. There were colored lights hung around the deck rails, and what was usually the sports deck had been magically transformed into a sultan’s tent.

  There was a fire eater inside the tent and a throng of shouting people in masks and Turkish sandals, saris, and flowing robes. Colonel Kettering, in a long caftan, swayed to the music of the Egyptian band.