East of the Sun Page 17

  She laughed a little wildly for a moment. “Darling.” It felt so strange to be using the word. “Whatever you think is right.”

  Relief flashed across his face like sunlight.

  “I appreciate you not making a fuss,” he said. “I’m afraid the one thing you can rely on in India is that no arrangement ever quite works out.”

  As they walked down the gangplank together, a thin woman wearing lots of lipstick and a cloche hat stepped out of the crowd to greet them.

  “Darlings,” she said. “Romeo meets Julietta at long last. I’m Cecilia Mallinson, call me Ci Ci.” When she kissed Rose lightly on both cheeks, she smelled strongly of cigarettes and perfume and some pepperminty smell like mouthwash.

  “Everything all right?” said Tor in a low voice as they headed toward Ci Ci’s car.

  “Fine, thank you,” breathed Rose without moving her mouth. “Simply lovely.”

  But then she stopped suddenly. “Oh, how awful, I forgot to say good-bye to Viva. I can’t believe it!”

  “Don’t worry,” Tor said, “she knew you were in a state and so was she—the boy’s parents had arrived. I gave her our address.”

  They followed Mrs. Mallinson’s smart little hat through the crowd with a team of native porters walking in front of them holding their luggage on their heads. A small girl with a dirty face and matted hair scampered up and tugged at Rose’s sleeve.

  “No mummy, no pappy, lady must buy.” She clawed at her mouth.

  “Ignore, ignore,” their hostess instructed. “Walk straight on; it’s a swindle.”

  Rose felt her senses spinning—there was too much to take in: the dazzling sun, the stink of drains and incense, the brilliant saris and dark faces. On the corner of the street, a man stared into a cracked mirror, trimming the hairs inside his nose with a pair of scissors.

  Halfway across the road they stopped: a small crowd had appeared to the deafening accompaniment of pennywhistles and cornets; they were carrying a papier-mâché elephant on a gaudy throne.

  Mrs. Mallinson put scarlet nails over her ears, wincing as they passed. “Simply ghastly,” she said.

  Tor was jumping up and down with excitement.

  “It’s Ganpati,” Jack shouted, “the Indian god of commerce.”

  Rose, squinting at him shyly through the sun, decided he was handsome after all. Very strong, very manly looking.

  They drove home in Mrs. Mallinson’s snazzy little car—a bottle-green Model T Ford. Tor sat in front, exclaiming and laughing at everything, Rose was behind with Jack, absurdly aware of where his square brown knees ended and her pink silk ones began. When Ci Ci swerved to avoid a skinny horse, she fought to keep her legs separate from his—it was all too sudden, too soon.

  Ci Ci turned to look at them. “So, tour guide speaking,” she sang out. She seemed determined to be fun, which made Rose feel even shyer. “Big pukka palacey-looking place on your left with the dome on top is the famous Taj Mahal Hotel, where we’ll be having a party on New Year’s Eve. Funny story attached to that,” she drawled. “It was built by an Indian, offended because he wasn’t allowed into another European hotel, and then his architect, some French oaf, put the swimming pool in the wrong place—behind the hotel instead of in front of it—and he committed suicide as a result.”

  All of them laughed uncertainly except Jack, who didn’t laugh at all. He had hairs on the backs of his hands, Rose noticed, fine blond hairs and, now that she had had a little time to think about it, she admired the way he hadn’t made a flowery speech to her on the ship. It would take time.

  “Coming up on your left, Bombay Yacht Club, where we sail, another favorite watering hole, and beyond that—Oops!”

  A sudden stop jammed Jack’s leg against hers. A man carrying bananas stepped in front of them and crossed the road.

  “And beyond that,” Ci Ci already seemed bored with showing them around, “India. Full of pagan gods and nothing like Hampshire.”

  Rose saw her eyes gleam at them naughtily in her car mirror. She blushed and felt her heart racing. Jack was holding her hand again.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  YWCA, Bombay. Extract from Viva Holloway’s diary, November 9, 1928

  I must write down what happened before it fades. Guy Glover is a rat, he laid a trap for me; he begged me to stay behind with him to meet his parents, who had taken a four-day train journey from Assam where Mr. Glover is a tea planter. Given Guy’s state of mind (incredibly erratic over the last few days: he says he hears voices through the wireless, or some such nonsense; hasn’t slept, smells, no washing, etc.), I felt this right thing to do. Also wanted to collect the balance of the money agreed toward my fare.

  Frank had agreed to stay behind to give his professional medical opinion on Guy (Dr. Mackenzie having washed his hands of the whole thing), in case things got sticky for me, but at the last minute was needed urgently in the san. So I was left to deal with things on my own.

  Ten minutes before they arrived, he started to chain-smoke and, at one point, got up, went outside, and banged his head against the wall. When I went to see him he said, to my utter amazement, “I tried to love you, but you’ve made things very difficult for me.” All I could think of to say was, “Guy, why don’t you sit down and have a cup of tea.” How ridiculously English!

  Eventually, thank God, they came. She, Gwen Glover, drab, tearful little partridge of a woman; Mr. G., a red-faced blusterer who immediately shook Guy’s hand and clapped him on the shoulder.

  “Well done, old boy, you got here in the end,” etc., etc. “Nice and hot, isn’t it?” to me, and “Have you both had fun?” Fun! wld not be my word for it.

  For the first five or ten minutes, Guy played the part of the prodigal son quite well, but when we started to collect his things, Guy suddenly left the room, slamming the door behind him.

  While Guy was out of the room I handed over the two letters the school had given me for them. Mr. Glover stuffed them in his pocket. He said he didn’t have time to read them now, which made me wonder whether he didn’t know already about the thieving, the exam results, etc.

  I tried to explain (v. quickly, and perhaps, in my anxiety, not v. well) the nervous strain Guy appeared to have been under on the voyage out, and how he’d been under doctor’s orders, and then—it only seemed fair to tell them—about how he’d been seen banging his own head against the ship’s railings.

  “But this is preposterous,” Mr. Glover said, turning redder. “Are you suggesting my son is not mentally sound?”

  “Yes, I think I am,” I said. Perhaps I should have been more noncommittal.

  Mrs. Glover started to cry and said something like, “I knew something like this would happen,” and “It was only a matter of time.”

  Mr. Glover said, “Shut up, Gwen,” and then, to me, “How dare you.” He then marched outside and got Guy.

  “Sit down on that bed, Guy,” he said, very much the black and white man who would sort this silly mess out in no time at all. “Miss Holloway claims you got involved in some fisticuffs on board. Thumped a fellow or got thumped or something.”

  Guy seemed to have forgotten his declaration of love a few moments before. He looked at me very coldly and shook his head. “She’s a liar,” he said. “And she drinks; she said to put it all on your bill.”

  At that precise and hideous moment, Guy’s steward came in with another armful of chits, still unpaid from our bar bill. Mr. G., with the air of one handling contaminated mouse droppings, spread them out on the bed. (Mrs. G. by this time whimpering and plucking at her dress.)

  Mr. G. got out a pad and a silver pencil: “One bottle Pouilly-Fuissé, one bottle Beaumes de Venise…” By the time he was finished, the bill was nearly ten pounds—the little rat had been drinking on the sly.

  Mr. G.’s head seemed to swell with rage like a puff adder’s. I was accused of being a drunken, irresponsible liar. If I hadn’t been drinking so much I would have been more sensitive to the finer feelings of a boy
who hadn’t, due to circumstances beyond their control, seen his parents for ten years and was understandably nervous. In conclusion, he had no intention of paying me my money, I was jolly lucky not to be handed over to the police.

  Perhaps there was some fear behind his bluster: when I invited him to talk to the ship’s doctor to verify my story, he didn’t reply, but instead offered magnanimously to pay off the bar chits, provided I signed a note saying I would pay him off in installments. While all this was going on, Guy, who is either very mad or very clever, stared grandly at the wall as if he had no part in it.

  They left on the night train to Assam. One of my last gestures to Guy was to put the packet of phenobarbitone in his pocket. He walked off between his parents, and then ran back to me, whispering, “Non illegitimi te carborundum—don’t let the bastards get you down.” How dare he!

  While Guy was trying to hug me, I caught sight over his shoulder of a smartly dressed Indian man staring at both of us. He took our photograph, shook his head, and sneered at us as though we disgusted him. It was a very odd moment and all I can assume is that we had offended his modesty by touching in public. There was a man beside him trying to pull him away.

  Guy left, and I was on my own again in the middle of Apollo Bunder…with dozens of porters swarming around me. I asked a tonga driver to take me to the YWCA, which Miss Snow had told me was a cheap, clean, respectable safe place to stay.

  I’m paying two rupees a night here for a single room. The double is three but I simply couldn’t stand the idea of sharing, not after what happened. My room, though small (about twelve foot by ten), overlooks a huge and beautiful tree (must buy tree book). It has a single iron bed, a table, and a cupboard in the hall where I can hang clothes.

  The clientele, as far as I can make out, consists of a mixture of working Englishwomen and Indian women, most working in Bombay as missionaries, students, or teachers. The management seem friendly tho’ authoritarian. LOTS OF RULES.

  I can just about afford the per diem, but even this small amount frightens me. I HAVE NO MONEY, or practically none, and if the check for my first article does not come through, must try and start any kind of paid work right away.

  Later

  The lights-out bell here goes at 10:30 p.m.; doors are locked at 11:00 p.m.

  Toward dusk, I went out into the street where the air felt warm and silky. At the corner of the street, an old man was sitting on his heels making bhel puris in a frying pan. The taste of them overwhelmed me. I’m home, I thought. Ridiculous, really, because Bombay was never home to me. The puri seller was delighted by my custom—and my groans. When I was finished, he washed my hands in a bowl of water he kept beside the frying pan. Then he produced a melon and peeled it and sliced it expertly. It was delicious, but I felt I had to pay him extra. I am very worried about money.

  The next morning

  Woke to cries of water man in street, a cow mooing, motor car, somebody laughing next door.

  After breakfast—I ate chapattis and dahl, delicious—I went to look at the noticeboard where three jobs for “respectable English girls” were advertised.

  Teacher wanted at a local missionary school. Query. Do you have to be very religious (hypocritical in my case) to teach in such a place?

  Lady companion to a Mrs. Van de Velde, who lives near the Jain Temple on Malabar Hill and wants reliable person to organize correspondence, and hopefully play bridge with her. Unless absolutely desperate, I think I’ll avoid being anyone’s companion for a while. G.G. has scarred me for life.

  Advertising agency: J. Walter Thompson seeks English secretary, good typing and shorthand skills. Laxmi Building, the goddess of wealth. Promising. Pity about my nonexistent shorthand. I’ll write anyway.

  When I asked the lady at the front desk about rents for flats in Bombay she alarmed me very much by telling me that no self-respecting Englishwoman on her own would live anywhere but either Malabar Hill or in the Colaba district, where the rents are high. But she then told me that some daring souls—mostly social workers and teachers—had moved out into less salubrious suburbs. One Daisy Barker, apparently a “damn fine egg,” has come out here to teach at Bombay University Settlement, an organization based in England that has come to India to teach Indian women at university level. I want to meet her.

  Another Englishwoman has also recently passed through, en route to teach at an English school up north. The lady at reception seemed anxious to point out that she was a close friend of the governor’s and could have stayed anywhere but had come here to meet a friend. Although these women are probably exceptions, this conversation gave me courage. So not all women out here are of the Gin and It, pig-sticking crowd. It also gave me an idea: why not a series of interviews (perhaps for Eve magazine) on these maverick souls? Will write outline tonight.

  Work will—must—come.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Bombay, four weeks later

  A week before Rose got married, Tor sat on the veranda of Ci Ci’s house in Malabar Hill with her feet up, her face gently stroked by blossom-scented breezes. She was writing a long-overdue letter to her mother, who wrote lengthy letters full of unanswered questions every week. The weather in England was, her mother said, beyond dreadful; Mr. Thaw, the gardener, had been laid up after slipping on wet leaves and breaking his wrist in the drive; it was impossible to find decent hats in Winchester. But anyway, how was Tor, having a wonderful time? Lots of parties and so forth? How did Rose feel about the wedding being put off for two weeks? Jolly cross, she imagined.

  Tor, her pen dithering over the page, didn’t quite know how or where to start, for as a matter of fact, far from being cross that the wedding had been delayed, Rose had seemed relieved. “It’s given me breathing space,” Rose had explained in that rather careful way that Tor found worrying. And from a perfectly selfish point of view, Tor had felt thrilled to have two extra weeks with Rose in this fairy-tale house.

  The house. Well, how to tell her mother, without sending her completely mad with jealousy, quite how perfect this place was and how well her cousin had done for herself, for Mr. Mallinson, whom Ci said had done clever things in cotton, seemed to be stinking rich even by the standards of Malabar Hill.

  From where Tor sat she could see a curved sloping lawn that led down to the Arabian Sea; a terrace bursting with bougainvillea and jasmine blossoms; a dazzling blue sky; and everywhere houseboys, maids, gardeners, sweeping and tidying, raking, washing, picking up, and generally making things perfect.

  At this precise moment, six servants were putting up the spectacular maharajah’s tent that Ci had planned as the centerpiece at the wedding reception next week.

  The tent—flamenco pink and inlaid with pieces of glass and rich embroideries—was typical of Ci’s famous “touch.” While the other large houses in this exclusive and largely European part of Bombay had plodding names such as Mon Repos or Laburnum, Ci’s was called Tambourine. Inside its marbled hall, a huge glass bird was suspended in a west-facing window where it glowed and spun at sunset as if it had caught fire. Ci’s drawing room was full of sherbet-colored silks and low sofas. In the upstairs guest room, which Tor and Rose shared, there were thick towels in the bathroom and jars of bath salts with wooden dippers in them; a silver-topped biscuit barrel with imported French wafers in it; and a leather stationery folder full of thick cream crested writing paper. She and Rose had hardly been able to believe their luck when they first landed here.

  The food was heavenly, too—not all those warmed-up leftovers, or réchauffées as her mother preferred to call them, you got at home: nest of warmed mince and tapioca puddings and such like. Here, there were fresh pineapples in the morning and mangoes and oranges warm from the trees. And no one ever nagged about bathwater or turning lights off or starving people in Africa.

  Thinking about it, as Tor was now, chewing the end of her pen, the only real fly in the custard was Geoffrey Mallinson, a large florid man with caterpillar eyebrows, who did go on a bit about
the state of the cotton industry in India, which according to him was about to collapse. But even Geoffrey conveniently disappeared each morning, puttering off in his chauffeur-driven car to God knows where, reappearing each night at the chota peg, the cocktail hour.

  Tor unscrewed the top of her pen and sighed. This was agony; there were so many things her mother seemed to want to know. Clearly, her main question—“Are you meeting lots of nice young men out there?”—hid the cruder sum of “Has our expenditure on frocks, tickets, etcetera, made the overall investment worthwhile?” And the simple answer to this, given the nonstop round of parties and picnics Ci had organized, could easily have been: “Mother, it’s looking promising.” For there were dozens of single men here.

  And, one morning while they were drinking coffee on the veranda, Ci had spelled out in clinical, and to Tor slightly shocking, detail exactly the sort of young man she should look for during her time here.

  “The civil service is usually absolutely top drawer,” she’d drawled, “and a very good catch dead or alive—you get three hundred a year as their widow, so in some ways,” a big wink here, “better dead than alive. I’m joking of course, darling.”

  Tor had already forgotten the other categories of people Ci had suggested, but remembered cavalry officers being high on the list—preferably members of English rather than Indian, which was a bit of a slap in the eye for Jack.

  Her hostess had also given her dire warnings about the Chi Chi girls, the half-Indian, half-European girls, some of them, according to Ci, impossibly glamorous and “real predators—they have absolutely no scruples about moving in and breaking up engagements. But don’t worry, my petal,” this disturbing little chat ended with a pat on Tor’s knee, “they’ll be falling over you soon, particularly if we…” but the sentence had ended vaguely in a haze of cigarette smoke, and this time anyway Tor was determined to err on the side of caution. Although several men had taken her telephone number, no one had actually made a pass at her yet, and she knew enough about her mother now to know that when she got her hopes raised high she was dangerous.