East of the Sun Read online

  “Bravo, Nigel,” said Viva quietly. She put her hand on his arm. “Who wrote it?”

  “Cavafy.” He looked at her. “I knew you’d like it.”

  “I do,” she said, and they looked straight into each other’s eyes.

  “So here’s to Phoenician harbors and to Bombay.” Frank took Tor’s hand in his and made her giggle nervously.

  “To fabulous journeys,” said Viva.

  “And to all of you for making this one so ripping,” said Tor with such fervor that they all laughed, except Rose, who was looking pensively toward the horizon.

  A little over an hour later, they put on their hats and sat in the upstairs salon, which had been made into a temporary church for the last service at sea. A Union Jack had been draped on a temporary altar, and from the windows they could see the faint blurred outlines of the coast of India.

  A large, sweating woman plunged her fingers into the harmonium, and then one hundred or so voices floated out into the clear blue yonder. Tor glanced at them: the long rows of memsahibs, all dressed up today, the colonels, Jitu Singh, the missionaries, the red-faced man who was something in jute, the little children who knelt with their mothers and whose ayahs you could see outside the door in their brightly colored saris.

  The hymn ended, they all knelt down, Rose, who was sitting beside her, was praying so hard her knuckles shone.

  Viva walked in late with the boy. He was wearing his outsized suit and looking molelike and dazed.

  Frank came late, too. He stood on the other side of the aisle from them, looking so handsome in his full uniform that Tor had to dig her nails into the palm of her hand.

  Last night, she’d had a conversation with him that had hurt her very much, although he would never have known it.

  They’d taken a turn together around the deck, and it had seemed so romantic with the silky breezes, the ship all lit up like some fabulous glass castle against the starlit night, that she’d thought, If he’s ever going to kiss me properly, it will be now. But instead he’d looked out in the blackness and given such a heartfelt sigh that she’d asked in what she hoped was a casual tone, “Frank, what are you going to do when you get to India? You’ve been very sphinxlike about the whole thing.”

  He’d looked at her blankly. “Have I? Well, I’m a sphinx without a secret because I’m pretty much certain now that I will stay in Bombay for a few weeks and earn some money, then I’m going up north, to do some research.”

  “Into that blackwater-fever thingy?”

  “Yes,” he said gloomily. “I think I mentioned it before—horrible disease, nobody knows much about it yet.”

  Under other circumstances she might have tried harder to draw him out. All men love talking about themselves—take an interest in his work, but he’d looked absolutely mis and had fallen silent, and Tor, trying to cheer things up, had said, “I can’t believe we’ll be in Bombay tomorrow morning. It really is too thrilling.”

  “How sweet you are,” he’d said sadly. “So eager for everything.”

  “Well, aren’t you? Come on, Frank, you must be. This is such a big adventure for us all.”

  “Not really,” he replied. He’d lit a cigarette and exhaled moodily.

  And then in the next five minutes she learned that she was a brick, a lovely girl, etcetera, and under normal circumstances just the sort of girl he should be spoony on, but that he was in love with someone else.

  Tor had forced herself to nod and smile.

  “Anyone I know?”

  He’d turned away.

  “No, I don’t think anyone does.” He’d said something else into the wind that she hadn’t caught. And then he turned to her and said with real desperation in his eyes, “I’ve tried so hard with her, too hard probably, but she’s frozen, all locked up, and now I won’t be able to get her out of my head. Oh, Tor, why am I telling you all this? It’s too sweet of you to listen.”

  “Not at all. What are friends for?” She’d even added a little joke. “It’s what my mother calls doorknob secrets. The things you blurt out suddenly just as you leave a room. And this is the last night on board after all.”

  Nobody had been around on deck, so he’d kissed her lightly on the tip of her nose. An uncley sort of kiss.

  “And what do you want, you sweet girl? Romance? Babies? Parties?”

  “No.” She’d been stung by this. “More than that.”

  “Don’t be offended,” he said. The tranced look in his eyes had gone and he was staring at her. “So what is it?”

  “I don’t know, Frank.” She’d felt a kind of unhappy mist cloud her mind and then it cleared, and as she looked at him, she felt for one moment that he was her enemy.

  Make him feel the important one. And so on and etcetera from all those soppy women’s mags, but suddenly she didn’t care.

  “Something solid. A job. Something that stays with you and can’t be taken away.”

  “Gosh, are you a suffragette,” he’d said bitterly, “or has Viva been getting at you, too?”

  “Darling,” Rose gave her quite a jab in the ribs, “do stop staring.”

  “I wasn’t,” said Tor, dragging her eyes away from Frank.

  “You were,” hissed Rose, “simply gawping.”

  They snuggled closer to each other, friends to the end.

  They were singing “To Be a Pilgrim,” and then “I Vow to Thee, My Country.” Nigel, who was on her other side, tried to make her laugh by singing the descants.

  Dear, gentle, clever, funny Nigel. The sort of man she should marry. The stutter put him into her league. She squeezed his arm. Poor Nigel.

  And then the music faded and when the captain stood up she was conscious again of the great hum of the ship’s engine slowing down, and of the water rushing by. The captain, solemn in his braided uniform, asked them all to put their hands together. He prayed for peace at a difficult time in India’s history. He prayed for the peace and welfare of the king and for the glorious British Empire of which they suddenly seemed such a tiny, temporary fragment.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Bombay

  Viva spent the morning sorting out the rancid-smelling clothes Guy had refused to send to the wash and generally keeping a wary eye on him. It was partly a way of avoiding herself, for they’d almost arrived. Earlier in the day, standing on the deck and watching Bombay’s skyline take shape, she remembered holding Josie’s hand on another sunlit day like this. Her father, young and athletically handsome, walking out of the crowd to claim them; her mother, flustered and happy, talking nineteen to the dozen to disguise the slight shyness they always felt at first until they became a family again.

  Later, there had always been a celebration lunch in the restaurant on top of the Taj Hotel with its view that filled the eye, with blue skies and boats and birds. This lunch had its rituals: the fresh mangoes craved for at school, then a fiery curry for her father, biriyani for herself, ice cream, sweetmeats, fresh lemonade—all such a treat after the school’s shepherd’s pies and suet stodge. All the days marked off the calendar in her school dorm, gone, all that longing made flesh. She and Josie with the pees again.

  Opening her eyes and seeing the skyline shimmer, she felt for a moment almost nauseous with pain, like someone who’s tried too early to stand on a broken leg. They were gone, they were gone. She’d had fifteen years to get used to it, but this morning the wounds were open and bleeding.

  Chowpatty Beach was just across the thin strip of land that was Bombay Island. It was here on their last afternoon in India before going back to school that she and Josie, numb with misery, dived and dived again into the warm turquoise water. Their mother stood on the beach watching them.

  “Time to come in, darlings,” she’d called eventually. Josie, thirteen months older and more responsible, headed for shore.

  Viva had dug her toes in. “I’m not coming in,” she’d shouted. “You can’t make me.”

  She’d sobbed then, turning her face toward the horizon, so Mu
mmy couldn’t see. But she’d come out in the end, what choice did she have?

  “Silly old sausage,” her mother had said, and bought her an ice cream.

  “Miss Holloway?” The purser’s assistant was at her side with a handful of bar chits for her to sign, for herself and the boy. Her stomach knotted again. They were thirty pounds over the twenty-five-pound allowance his parents had sent her. She’d be meeting them in less than an hour.

  His father she’d pictured as a taller, beefier version of Guy but with more menacing teeth. I’m sorry, she’d imagined him saying, but let me get this straight. You allowed a boy of sixteen to drink, and then you went ashore and left him on his own in Port Said?

  Who, apart from Frank, would back her up when she tried to tell them how strangely Guy had behaved, and how difficult her position had been. The ship’s doctor—having handed her the few phenobarbitones he called “emergency rations”—seemed to have lost interest in him entirely. Well, we’ve never had any problems with him before, they’d say and, if the Glovers refused to pay her fare, the result was not quite penury but close.

  She had a grand total of one hundred and forty pounds left in the world, wired ahead of her to Grindlays Bank in Bombay, some for emergencies and accommodation, the rest to get herself to Simla to collect her parents’ trunk. If she didn’t find work almost as soon as she arrived, she had, she estimated, about a month’s worth of funds to live on.

  Now she could smell India from the ship—spices, dung, dust, decay: elusive, unforgettable. From the harbor came the sounds of cracked trumpets and drums and shouts from the chana wallahs flogging peanuts and gram.

  “Madam! Please!” An old man was standing on the deck of a paddle steamer that had drawn up alongside the Kaisar. He was holding up a skinny old monkey in a red hat and making it wave at her. “Hello, madam! Mrs!” Nobody in England would smile at strangers so joyfully.

  As she put the palms of her hands together and made the Hindu greeting of namaste, tears came into her eyes. Beyond him, a rainbow-colored crowd stood on the pier waiting for them, with one or two khaki-clad Europeans poking up between them like field mushrooms.

  She looked at her watch and advanced it by one hour to eleven-thirty—five and a half hours ahead of London. In Earl’s Court at this hour, she’d be watching through her basement window the usual parade of ankles, sloshing their way toward the omnibus and the tram.

  In Bombay, in early winter, she felt her skin opening like a flower to the sun.

  “Viva! Viva!” Tor, looking large and excitable, bounded toward her. “Isn’t this thrilling?”

  “Is Rose all right?” Viva asked quickly.

  “No, of course she’s not, she’s downstairs having kittens. She’s decided against meeting him on the pier as all the mems will stare. Nigel’s gone ahead to find him and to take him down to our cabin.”

  “What will he be wearing? Uniform or mufti?”

  “Haven’t the foggiest, nor has Rose. Isn’t that the sort of thing you need to be married to know?” Tor’s eyes bulged humorously.

  “God, how frightening.”

  “Oh, Viva.” The clutch on her arm tightened. “Please promise not to ditch me the moment we arrive. You can show me around and I’ll ask you to parties.”

  Viva smiled but said nothing. How could she possibly explain her financial terrors to someone like Tor, to whom a monthly allowance, however small, was as natural as blood pumping into veins?

  “We’re all having drinks tonight at a place called the Taj. Do you know it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t you dare bolt once the ship’s landed.”

  “I won’t.” Shyly she returned Tor’s squeeze. She wasn’t good at this kind of moment. “I’d better go down and get Guy up,” she said, looking at her watch.

  “Is he all right?”

  “Not really. I’ll be glad when today’s over,” she said.

  He came to the door, yawning and bad-smelling and affecting a nonchalance she knew he didn’t feel. He was still in his pajamas and had a chin full of stubble.

  “Please, Guy,” she said, “it’s nearly twelve-fifteen. Wash your face, do your hair, get cracking.” Impatience flared up in her again. “You’re sixteen years old, for God’s sake,” she wanted to tell him, “not six.”

  “I can’t yet,” he’d said. “There’s someone in the bathroom who is on my crystal set again.”

  On the night before—they’d been packing and in the middle of what seemed to her a perfectly normal conversation—he’d shaken his head and given a gargling groan, like a soul in hell, that had made her hair stand up on end.

  “Why did you do that?” she said.

  “Why did I do what?” He’d looked at her as if she was the one going mad.

  “Look, if you’re worried about something, tell me,” she’d said. “I don’t like frightening noises.”

  And sure enough, a few moments later, he’d said in a casually offhand voice, “When my parents arrive tomorrow, will you stay with me? They’ll probably ask a lot of very boring questions.”

  He’d taken off his glasses, looking naked without them.

  “Yes, Guy, I’ll stay,” she’d said, “but give it time. You’ll soon feel like a family again.”

  “They’re complete bloody strangers,” he’d said. “But thank you for the advice.”

  “I know I’m right,” she’d lied. She and Frank had agreed it was important to keep him on an even keel, and he had been given two of the bright pink pills the night before just in case.

  And now they had definitely arrived: she felt the final bump and shudder of the Kaisar landing and then a loud roar from the pier.

  “Go outside. Go outside and find the blighters.” Guy’s voice crackled with nerves. “Switch off the dratted wireless on your way out.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Rose had decided to come up on deck after all. She was holding hands with Tor, digging her nails into the palm of her hand.

  “Where is he? Have you seen him?” she said to Tor, who was jiggling up and down.

  “Not yet, but I can see Viva.” They looked down toward a blur of faces and watched her work her way through the crowd. A few seconds later, Tor grabbed Rose’s hand. “Oh God!” she said. “Look!”

  Nigel stood next to a tall blond man in a khaki suit holding a bunch of scarlet Canna lilies in his hand. When he saw them, Nigel gave them the most casual wave possible, a mere flick of his wrist. They’d known they could rely on him to be discreet.

  Rose’s hand tightened into an iron grip.

  “I’m going downstairs again,” she told Tor suddenly. “I don’t want everyone staring. Can you wait here and bring him down?”

  “Of course I will, darling,” said Tor. “He’s handsome, Rose, isn’t he?” Although she’d seen the stern look on his face, his rigid posture.

  “Yes,” said Rose faintly.

  “When you see him, Rose, don’t forget to smile,” said Tor. “Smile and look relaxed. Oh God, I’m turning into my mother.”

  Rose didn’t respond. She was staring down again.

  “You’ll soon get to know him, Rose.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I know.”

  Another quick look then Rose ran back down to the cabin again and arranged herself in a casual pose on a wicker chair between the bunks. Feet were pacing above her head, the squeak of shoes running along the corridor. She waited for what felt like an age, listening to the dull thumping in her heart, and then at the knock on the door she sprang to her feet.

  “Rose,” said a deep voice. And there he was, standing in the doorway, topi in one hand, flowers in the other. He was taller than she remembered and not as handsome, or maybe that was because his face seemed somewhat contorted.

  “Well, hello!” he said. She hadn’t remembered him being so hearty either. He handed her the lilies. “These are for you. They grow like weeds out here.”

  When he put his topi down on the bunk, she thought he might ki
ss her but instead he said, “May I?” and sat down and spread his muscular legs wide as if he was posing for a rugby photograph. He cleared his throat.

  “They’re lovely, Jack.” She buried her nose into the scentless flowers. “Thank you.”

  “Nice of that fellow Nigel to come and find me,” he said. “He seems a decent chap.”

  “Yes, he’s a civil servant, he’s off to—gosh, I can’t even remember, how silly. I can find out for you,” as if he was desperate to know Nigel’s whereabouts. “These are really so pretty.”

  Smiling at the flowers again, she felt a disagreeable blankness where her heart was supposed to be.

  “Bit dusty, I’m afraid,” he said. How large he seemed with his big legs spread like that. He seemed to have filled up the whole cabin. “They’ve been driven on a motorbike between here and Poona. I hope you don’t mind that I haven’t got a car yet. I forgot to tell you that.”

  “Of course I don’t mind,” she said, and he cleared his throat again.

  She wished her mother was here with her ready laugh and knack with strangers.

  “Tor and I had such a jolly trip,” she said after a while. “Real life is going to be absolute hell!” The smile died on his lips.

  Oh no! What a perfectly idiotic thing to say, she thought. Now he’ll be quite sure I regret the whole thing.

  “Well, you’re going to be rushed off your feet here,” he started, and then stopped.

  The fan had gone off; her hand resting in his felt embarrassingly sticky.

  “Look, there’s a slight change of plan about the wedding that I wanted to tell you about before anybody else did.”

  When he said this she felt an immediate lightening of her spirits: the whole thing was off, this was a dream.

  “Yes, there’s been a spot of bother up on the northwest border recently; I can explain it all in more detail soon.” He was sweating, she noticed, and had a dimple in his chin. “My CO has asked me to join a company up there but I don’t know when yet. If there is any change to the date, Ci Ci Mallinson says you can move in with her for a while. The season starts in November, so there’ll be masses of parties.”