East of the Sun Page 18

  November 27, 1928

  Dear Mummy,

  I’m afraid this will have to be a very short letter because I have got to go out soon. We are all getting very excited about Rose’s wedding, which is in a week’s time. Today we plan to do some last-minute shopping at the Army and Navy Store in the Fort part of town. I am very sorry to hear that Mr. T. has hurt his wrist. I will write a much longer letter tomorrow and tell you about everything. I am very well and thank you, Mummy, for the dress patterns. I will see if I can get them made up for you cheaply here.

  Love to you and to Daddy,

  Victoria

  When Ci suddenly appeared wearing a lilac-colored kimono and ballet slippers and trailing Arpège, her favorite scent, Tor had to fight the temptation to fall over her page like a child in primary school. Her letter suddenly felt so dull and pedestrian.

  During Tor’s first days at Tambourine, almost everything about Ci—the bright red lips, the slouchy walk, the chic clothes—had made Tor feel huge and slow-witted and obvious. But now awkwardness had grown into a kind of hero worship. Careful examination of Ci, Tor felt, could teach her how to be sophisticated and fun and not care so much about what other people thought about her.

  “So how’s our little orphan this morning?” Ci ran her long fingernails through the parting in Tor’s hair.

  This orphan tag was a new joke between them, for Ci actually had two children of her own—a boy and a girl at boarding schools in England—ghostly figures in silver frames on the mantelpiece. She rarely spoke of them, except in jokes, “my rug rats,” she’d say, or “the ghastly creatures.” Sometimes she read out their faltering communications in piping voices.

  Neither child seemed to have made deep imprints on Ci’s life or imagination; all Ci had said about Flora, who seemed on the evidence of the photo to have inherited her father’s rather doggily devoted eyes, was that twelve was a dreadful age and that she hoped by the next holiday she would have become “halfway human.”

  “Well!” Ci was glancing through a pile of invitations that had been placed near her chair along with morning coffee. “We are so in demand today I don’t know if I can bear it.”

  She sliced open the first letter. “Chrysanthemum show. Jan. tenth, Willoughby Club, with tea on the lawn afterward. Thank you, Mrs. Hunter Jones, but no.” She made the letter into a dart and skimmed it into the wastepaper basket. “The most boring woman I’ve ever met.”

  Tor giggled.

  “Could I trouble you for half a cup more?” Ci ran her red nails along the next envelope. “No sugar…this sounds more like it: a moonlight picnic on Chowpatty Beach with the Prendergasts. They’re very good value and have a handsome son. Put it on our possible pile, darling.”

  Tor propped the card on the mantelpiece in front of Flora’s hopeful face, now obliterated by a stack of invitations to supper parties, picnics, polo matches, and shoots.

  The phone rang. “Malabar 444,” said Ci in her thrilling drawl. She rolled her eyes and handed it to Tor. “Another man,” she said audibly, handing the phone to her. “He says his name is Timothy.”

  This was a small red-headed man Tor had met the week before at a party at the Taj. Something in forestry. He wanted to know if he could take her out to dinner that weekend. Sorry about the short notice and all that.

  “How sweet,” Tor replied. “Do you mind awfully if I phone you back in ten minutes?”

  “I’m not sure I want to go,” she told Ci.

  “Then don’t, darling,” said Ci. “Plenty more poisson.”

  This was true in a way, already at the club and at the Taj, where she’d been to cocktail parties and dances, she’d met young naval officers, yummy-looking in their white uniforms, and cavalry officers, businessmen in Bombay to make some killing in jute or cotton, and even though her brush with Jitu had made her more cautious on this count, some high-caste Indian men, some very seductive with their liquid eyes and perfect skin. And although it was true that no one had exactly seized her yet, there’d been plenty of flirting. After the many small humiliations of her London season Tor could hardly believe that now she had some choice in the matter.

  “Oh, marvelous!” Ci Ci was opening a large scarlet envelope with a gaudy crest on the back. “Oh, what fun.” She was reading the letter inside. “Goofers will love this. Cooch Behar has asked us to go shooting with him in three weeks’ time. He’s got the most wonderful place.”

  Three weeks’ time, Tor thought. By then Rose will be married and gone. How strange that’s going to feel.

  “‘Sadly places are numbered,’” Ci read on, “‘so please write back at early convenient.’ Early convenient. I thought he’d been to Oxford. We’ll have to find a babysitter for our little orphan, won’t we, darling. I’m assuming you’ll still be here?”

  As she swept her eyes upward, Tor experienced a moment of panic. Where else would she be? At the moment she had no other plans.

  “I’d love to stay on for a bit more, if you’ll have me,” she said humbly.

  “We’ll see how you behave,” said Ci. “Oh damn.” She had opened another letter and was looking cross. “The Sampsons can’t come to Rose’s wedding, what a bore, which reminds me, I meant to ask you this earlier. Your advice. Last week,” Ci took a quick sip of her coffee, “I had a slightly tense discussion with old frosty knickers, Captain Chandler or whatever his name is, about the reception. I thought it was a bit of a cheek actually, because he seemed to be saying he only wanted about five people he knew really well to come to the party afterward, but our lawn looks completely wrong like that—naked and sort of golf coursey—and I am the hostess, so I’ve invited a few amusing chums of our own to swell the ranks. I don’t think Rose will give a damn either way, do you?”

  Tor, flattered that Ci Ci should ask her advice, said without thinking, “No, of course she won’t mind, why should she?” At the time she was rather pleased to hear herself add, “We’ll need a few extra caps and bells,” because it was the kind of confusing but clever remark that Ci might have made. In fact, when she thought about it later, Ci had said it in the club a few nights previously.

  And now, how the week had sped by, there were only twenty-four hours to go before Rose’s wedding, and Tor had woken up covered in sweat. The first thing she saw when she opened her eyes was Rose’s ivory silk wedding dress, hanging up outside the wardrobe; Tor’s bridesmaid’s dress hung beside it like a fat sister.

  Tor lay in bed for a moment brooding about the reception. All through the week, the phone had rung more or less continuously, and every time Ci had said, “Darling, do come, you’ll swell the ranks,” Rose had looked pensive and Tor had kept her mouth shut because when she’d relayed the information about the extra guests to Rose, she’d left out the bit about Jack minding, because it was too late to do anything about it and Rose was already in a state and had got quieter and quieter as the wedding day drew nearer.

  When Tor went to the window she saw that, outside in the garden, Pandit and his helpers were putting the finishing touches to the maharajah’s tent, which looked magnificent. She watched an antlike stream of servants moving from the house into the garden. They were putting kerosene flares around the edges of the lawn. They were polishing glasses, and hauling tables from the house into the garden. Lots and lots of tables.

  At eleven o’clock she and Rose went to have their hair arranged in the salon at the Taj Mahal Hotel, where Rose’s gold silk hair was exclaimed over, as it always was. Both of them were tremendously aware of time that day, remarking on how the hours crawled by in the hot dead afternoon, and then, oh God, only nineteen hours to go and then eighteen hours and so on.

  When darkness fell and it was time for their last supper together, they went downstairs, quieter than they usually were and awed by all that was ahead. Rose had been firm about wanting a quiet evening with Tor, and for once, Ci (now upstairs and changing for dinner) had let them decide.

  Tor and Rose sat side by side on the veranda listening to the
thump of the sea in the distance. In front of them, the darkening shoreline was dotted by thousands of tiny pinprick lights from the kerosene lamps and the open fires of the native quarters—

  They sat in silence for a while.

  “I’m petrified, Tor,” Rose’s voice came through the darkness. “Isn’t that silly of me?”

  “You’ll be all right.” Tor took her hand, hoping she’d say the right thing. “You’ll look so beautiful.”

  Such a trivial thing to say, but the truth was, she hadn’t a clue whether she would be happy with this Jack person, whom she personally found quite hard work.

  “It’s not the wedding so much, it’s everything else. It feels so peculiar without Mummy and Daddy being here. I—” Tor heard Rose inhale softly and let out a puff of air. “I mean, of course I understand why they couldn’t come. I’d have hated Daddy to get any more ill, but—”

  Then Ci came dancing into the room, followed by two servants holding drinks trays and some jazz record that had arrived from London that day that she wanted them to hear.

  She turned two lights on and told Pandit she’d like a very large gin. “You girls look like Greek widows tonight,” she told them. “Cheer up.”

  Four hours until the wedding. Rose was still asleep. Tor went for an early-morning walk to calm herself down.

  In the distance, the sea glittered like sapphires, dazzling her eyes. At the bottom of the path, a gardener who was watering geraniums smiled radiantly and bowed deeply. How jolly all the servants who work for Ci seem compared to English servants, Tor thought. Mother’s hateful char Doreen and their resentful ancient gardener were always moaning about low wages and how hard they worked, and making one feel like a perfect pig if you asked them to do anything for you.

  Ci, who treated her staff with a kind of amused contempt, seemed adored by them. And why not? reasoned Tor, walking back to the house.

  Well, perhaps the little huts they lived in at the back of the house were a little dog kennel-ish, but the climate was so different here, and they had plenty of food, a beautiful place to work in, a chance to learn how to do things properly, and reasonable wages. But having said all this, Tor wanted to hug this little man for looking so genuinely joyful on the morning of Rose’s wedding. He looked as if he cared.

  When she got upstairs again, Rose was not only awake but had bathed and was standing in pale stockings and her new silk underwear before the mirror.

  The first thing she said was, “D’you know, I really am glad in the end Daddy didn’t make the trip; I’m sure it would have been much too much for him,” as if this was what she’d wanted all along. But the pale skin above her petticoat was covered in the rash Rose got when she was frightened. She’d dabbed a few spots of calamine lotion on it.

  After a breakfast that neither of them could eat, they went upstairs again together and washed, and then Rose put on a breath of powder and a dab of Devonshire violets behind her ears.

  “Are you ready?” said Tor, determined to be motherly and protective even though she felt completely overwhelmed.

  “Yes.”

  Tor took the silk wedding dress off the hanger and let it slide over Rose in luscious waves. Rose stood stock-still and stared at herself in the mirror.

  “Gosh,” she said. “Caramba.”

  “Now the veil.” Tor held out the fine lace.

  She pinned it gently around Rose’s face, thinking how innocent she looked, how young and hopeful and how the last time she’d done this they’d been dressing for the school play. Rose had been the Virgin Mary; she’d been the innkeeper at Jerusalem and worn two garden sacks stitched together.

  “There.” She stepped back. “Let’s have a look at you. You’ll do for most known purposes,” she said to make Rose smile, for her eyes were full of terror.

  There was a knock on the door.

  “One hour until showtime,” Ci Ci sang out.

  “Oh blast!” Tor, who was struggling into her own dress, was having trouble with the poppers. “Oh God.”

  “Here.” Rose did them up for her, and then planted a kiss on her forehead. “You look beautiful, Tor,” she said. “The next time we do this, it will be for you.”

  At ten-thirty, Pandit, in a red silk turban, drove the Daimler around to the front of the house. Geoffrey, gleaming with sweat in his morning coat, sat beside him in the front. Ci, wearing a purple cloche with a large scarlet feather in it, seemed distant and snappy, and when Geoffrey started a monologue about some company headquarters they were passing, and how it was going through lean times, too, she said, “Shut up, Geoffrey, she doesn’t want to hear all that on her wedding day.”

  But Rose didn’t seem to be listening to anyone anyway; she was looking toward the dusty streets, her lips moving.

  When they arrived at St. Thomas’s everything speeded up. The garrison vicar, who seemed put out because he’d had to drive all the way from Poona specially, after their arrangements had been changed, almost bundled them out of the car and into the vestry, the “Wedding March” played and Rose and Tor walked up the aisle between a crowd of hats. When the hats turned around to sneak a look at the bride, Tor didn’t recognize anyone except Ci Ci, standing yards apart from Geoffrey, who had taken umbrage because she’d told him to shut up and he thought that wasn’t on in public.

  When Jack, stern and handsome in his blue and gold uniform practically covered in brass buttons and braid, suddenly appeared and stood beside Rose at the altar, Tor longed for him to turn and gasp at the sight of Rose, who really did look so ethereal and princesslike, but he stared stiffly ahead, clearing his throat once or twice. The garrison vicar galloped through the ceremony, mispronouncing Rose’s surname. Rose’s I do was almost inaudible even to Tor, who was standing right behind her.

  When the service was done and they walked out into the harsh sunlight, a dozen or so men from Jack’s regiment appeared, making an archway of crossed swords down the path. Rose blinked at them for a moment and then at Ci’s friends pouring from the church, some of them already gossiping and laughing. And then, in a moment that wrung Tor’s heart, Rose scampered like a startled rabbit underneath the crossed swords and out the other side again. Tor stood waiting for her, blinded for a second by sunlight bouncing off a sword.

  “Don’t abandon me at the reception,” Rose muttered to Tor before she disappeared with Jack in the Daimler.

  When Tor saw Rose again at Tambourine House, she stood looking pale and much too young to be married, on the edge of a roaring mass of partygoers: Ci’s friends had turned up in force. She searched for Viva, who had promised to come, but couldn’t see her.

  Ci stepped from the throng, put a glass of champagne in their hands and shouted, “Now comes the fun bit.”

  Tor gulped a glass down and then another. The whole morning had been such a strain and she was glad it was over.

  After more drinks and delicious things to eat, Ci stood on a chair shouting, “People! People!” through a megaphone. She announced to roars of laughter that Geoffrey was going to make a speech early before they all did A Midsummer Night’s Dream and collapsed on the lawn with their glasses because it was so hot and everyone had a lot of gossiping to catch up on. The speeches would be in the pond garden.

  The guests carried their glasses underneath the arch of wisteria blossom that led into the shady part of the garden where two stone nymphs gamboled under cascades of water. Ci tried to lead the wedding party by holding both Jack and Rose’s hand and scampering down the path, but Jack, who still looked shocked and who was, Tor thought, not a natural scamperer anyway, dropped her hand and walked stiffly down the path on his own.

  When everyone was assembled Geoffrey Mallinson stood up with a glass in his hand, the nymphs splashing water behind him. “A lot of you will know me only as the head of Allied Cotton,” he began prosaically. “We’ve met at the club, at the racetrack, at the gymkhana, until—”

  “Oh for God’s sake, Geoffrey, trot on,” Ci said distinctly.

 
; “But today,” Geoffrey plowed on, “I’m here in lieu of Rose Wetherby’s father, who I have not had the honor of meeting but who sounds like a very fine man. And what an awfully proud man he would be today to see this beautiful young girl who stands before us like a freshly plucked flower.”

  Tor was so pleased to see Rose smile at him and then shyly at the crowd of strangers, some of them murmuring “Hear, hear.” Tor finally spotted Viva in the crowd, and thought that it was beginning to feel more like a proper wedding, but then Geoffrey spoiled it all by booming, “To Rosemary.”

  Nobody ever called her Rosemary. It wasn’t even her name.

  By four o’clock that afternoon the sun reached its zenith in a perfect blue sky and some of the guests had, as Ci had predicted, collapsed in the heat.

  When Rose appeared from the house again in her going-away outfit, Tor stepped up to say good-bye. She wanted to say something that would fill in the blanks of that strange and unreal day. To thank Rose for being the best friend a person could ever have, to wish her kisses and babies, but at the last minute her mind went blank with misery, and all she did was peck her on the cheek like a maiden aunt, and say gruffly, “Off you go then,” as if she couldn’t wait for her to leave, which in a funny way she couldn’t.