East of the Sun Page 20

  After ten stops, the conductor said with a wave of his hand, “Byculla is here. Alight, madam. Thank you.”

  She stepped down, and after looking at her map walked down a narrow street that led into a series of sinister-looking alleyways. The pavement was full of potholes and rotten vegetables and a few puddles left over from the night before when it had rained. Across the street a small boy was squatting on the curb defecating, his ragged shirt pulled up to his waist. When he looked at her curiously, she looked away.

  Daisy had said her house was near the Umbrella Hospital, but all she could see were ramshackle shops built like dark cages in the wall. She poked her head inside one of the shops where an old man sat on his haunches ironing a pile of shirts.

  “Where is the…?” she asked in Hindi, and then she put an imaginary umbrella up above her head.

  “It’s over there.” He pointed toward the next corner where there was a crumbling block of flats with wrought-iron balconies on the front, most of them broken. She walked across the street and was about to ring the bell when a shutter opened above her head.

  “Hello, hello,” a voice that might have welcomed visitors to Buckingham Palace floated down. “I’m assuming you’re Miss Holloway.” A small round woman wearing a sun hat squinted down at her from the balcony. “Hang on, I’ll come down and get you.”

  Shoes clattered down the stairs and then the door burst open on a woman who Viva guessed to be quite old, at least thirty-five. She wore rimless glasses and a simple cotton frock and had a lively intelligent face.

  “Forgive the shambles,” Daisy said. “I only moved last week; half my stuff is sitting on a broken-down bullock cart in Colaba.” She hooted with laughter like a girl.

  The corridor smelled of old curries, and fly spray, but when they stepped into Daisy’s flat, Viva liked it immediately. It had high ceilings and whitewashed walls and was airy and somehow purposeful-looking with its neat piles of books and bright cushions. On a desk in the sitting room was a typewriter and stacks of what looked like examination papers.

  “Come and look at my new view.” Daisy led her through the sitting room and out onto a large balcony with a white mosaic floor and a view of roofs and a mosque. “It’s going to be a perfect party place,” she said, sunlight bouncing off her pale skin. “We played badminton there last night. Now, tea? Sandwiches? Are you absolutely famished?”

  Over tea, Viva decided she liked Daisy. Behind the kindly eyes she sensed a practical energetic mind that knew how to get things done. In some way she couldn’t yet define one felt safe with her. Over a second cup of tea, Daisy told her how she was part of a movement called the Settlement, formed by Oxbridge women graduates who’d decided “we were so spoiled and privileged that we’d come to India and teach the women at the university here.”

  Much later Viva learned that Daisy, with her dowdy dresses and cut-glass accent, had a titled father who owned estates in Norfolk, but that wasn’t how she wanted to live her life. She had an urge to do things for other people, and was much derided for it among the smart set.

  “Indian women, at university?” Viva was amazed—nobody had ever gone to university from where she came from. “Forgive me, but I thought most were illiterate?”

  “Well, a lot of village people are, it’s true.” Daisy looked pensive. “But Bombay is very advanced in certain respects and we have female lawyers here, poets, doctors, artists, engineers. And they’re a splendid bunch: bright, questioning, full of beans. If you’re interested, you can meet them.”

  Apart from her teaching, Daisy said she was doing a six-week course herself at the university so she could brush up on her Urdu. “Do you know the language? Oh, such richness! If you have any interest in poetry at all, you must allow me to lend you some. Such a discovery!”

  “I’d like that very much.”

  “And you?” Daisy beamed at her from behind wire spectacles. “Have you lived in India before?”

  “Until I was ten. Both my parents were killed in a car crash up north.” The lie slipped out so easily now. “And I went back to England; I’ve come back partly to pick up their things. They’ve left a trunk for me in Simla.”

  “Poor you, that will be sad for you.”

  “Well…” Viva never knew what to say.

  “Any work planned?”

  She cleared her throat. “I want to be a writer.” When things weren’t going well she felt so fraudulent saying this. “I’ve had one or two things published in England.”

  “Gosh, how exciting.”

  “Not very, I’m afraid, at the moment. I wish it was. In fact, I’m looking now for any kind of work that can support me.”

  Daisy poured more tea into both their cups.

  “But you’ve only just arrived.” She broke the silence. “And this is such an extraordinary time to be in India, everything’s changing: ideal, I would have thought, from a writer’s point of view.”

  She’d told Viva about the Indian National Congress Party, who were now more determined than ever to wrest the country back from the British, about the moves to boycott British goods, and how Gandhi, “a true inspiration,” was quietly mobilizing Indians.

  “Do you think Indians are starting to really loathe English people then?” said Viva, confused as usual about which side she was on.

  “No, I don’t,” Daisy said. “Indians are very forgiving—they’re the warmest and friendliest race on earth, until they are the most violent, and it can change like that.” She snapped her fingers. “A few hotheads really fan the flames. So be warned,” she said. “And be careful. But let’s go back to the task at hand.” Daisy had her pen and notebook out. She was concentrating fiercely. “How long do you want to stay in India for?”

  “For at least a year.”

  “Do you speak any Hindi?”

  “A little.”

  “Splendid. But do try and learn some Marathi, too—it makes such a difference.”

  Daisy said that she knew Lloyd Woodmansee, too. “He used to be features editor at the Times of India, as well as working for the Pioneer. I’m not absolutely sure they use many female writers, and if they do it’s probably only to write about frocks and chrysanthemum shows, but he’s worth a try. He’s terribly old now and a bit down on his luck. Take him a chocolate cake.”

  She took a piece of paper from her workmanlike handbag and wrote down his name and address. “He lives opposite Crawford Market.”

  “What sort of money might one expect if I was lucky enough to get a story to write?” Viva’s heart thumped.

  “Oh, practically nothing, I’m afraid, unless, you know, you’re someone like Rudyard Kipling. I wasn’t paid at all for the couple of things I did for them recently.”

  “Ah.”

  “Oh dear…sorry.”

  “It’s fine.” Viva turned away. “Thank you so much for trying.”

  Daisy put the cups back on the tray, lining them up carefully.

  “Are you very short of money?” she said.

  Viva nodded, mortified by the tear she could feel rolling down the side of her cheek. “I have about twenty-five pounds left,” she said at last. “My passage out was supposed to have been paid for, but my employer had other ideas.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “No,” said Viva, “it was not.”

  “Look, do sit down for a second longer,” said Daisy. “I have another idea, nothing very grand but it may tide you over.”

  In the next half hour she told Viva that apart from their educational works the Settlement supported two children’s homes in Bombay: one in Byculla called the Tamarind, which served a midday meal to street children and gave them rudimentary lessons in reading and writing. They had a few children living there as temporary boarders and were missing one assistant at the moment. The pay was poor—one rupee a day, but the hours were flexible and might suit a writer. The job came with a small room, nothing grand, in a house nearby that was owned by a Parsi, Mr. Jamshed, whose own daughters were at
the university.

  “The children will tell you enough stories to fill a lifetime of books,” she added, “and surely that’s better than chrysanthemums and frocks.”

  Viva thought for a bit. She put down her cup. “I’ll take it,” she said.

  “Splendid.” Daisy shook her hand.

  While they’d been talking, the sky beyond the balcony and above the city had burst into flames, and somewhere down the street she could hear the water man shouting, “Pani.”

  “Maybe,” Daisy said, “we should find you a bus home. It’ll be dark soon.”

  And for the first time in days, Viva didn’t dread the empty hours ahead. None of this was in the least what she’d expected, but it was a start.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Poona, January 1929

  On the day that Viva started her first job in Bombay, Rose sat silently in the window seat of the Deccan Express. She and Jack had been married for three weeks and were on their way to Poona, where they were to move into their first married quarters. Three weeks was long enough for her to know that he was a man who did not wish to be spoken to while he was reading the papers and that his plans, from now on, would generally be considered more important than hers.

  This point had been made, patiently but firmly, in the bedroom of the old-fashioned guest house in Mahabaleshwar, where they had spent the four days of their belated honeymoon.

  “What fun,” she’d said, clapping her hands with delight when he’d explained that they’d stop for a day or two in Bombay on their way back to Poona. “I can go and see Tor, and maybe Viva.”

  She was longing to catch up with them and hear their news. He’d frowned and she’d seen that pulse flicker in his cheek that she was beginning to register as a slight warning.

  He’d explained that he had to go and look at a horse, and then they’d need to do some shopping for the new house. She’d felt quite ridiculously disappointed, but tried hard not to pout.

  “There will be plenty of time once we’re settled,” he’d softened immediately and put his arm around her, “but we do need to get mobile.”

  Getting mobile was a favorite expression of Jack’s. As was “let’s crack on,” or, if he was feeling playful, avante, or jaldi, which was Hindi for hurry.

  Sometimes she caught him looking at the locals in amazement. Many of them seemed able to spend long dreamy hours simply sitting and staring. He could never be like that.

  Quietly, so as not to jiggle Jack’s arm, Rose got out the maroon leather writing case and the gold fountain pen her father had given her before she left.

  “Well, my darling parents,” she wrote, “this old married lady is on the train now. We left Bombay over an hour ago, a journey of about one hundred and fifty miles, and I’m very excited at the prospect of seeing our new married quarters this afternoon. My new address, by the way, is 2 The Larches, Poona Cantonment. From my window I can see wild-looking wooded slopes and everything getting more open and more romantically Indian!”

  Actually, rather dusty and brown-looking, too, although Jack had assured her tersely, between reading the sporting section and minutely scrutinizing the advertisements in the Pioneer, that come the monsoon it would be greener.

  Rose broke off here and thought of the less romantic view they’d both seen—it still made her blush to think of it—earlier in the day. In a large dusty field on the edge of Bombay, they’d seen dozens of natives going to the lavatory in broad daylight. Number twos.

  “Don’t look,” Jack had commanded her, but she’d seen out of the corner of her eye all these bottoms, hideous and shocking, looking like field mushrooms at first glance.

  “We had a ripping time last weekend,” she continued. “I was taken on my first tiger shoot at a hunting camp near Tinai Ghat. At dusk, we saw a pack of red dogs cross the road. (Jack told me later that they are one of the cruelest and most terrifying of all animals around here.) A few seconds later, I saw my first tiger. Our shikari (guide) had left a dead deer lying in the path; the tiger was walking toward it. When he saw the dogs, he halted in his tracks as though utterly disgusted and walked slowly away. The red dogs must have seen the tiger but they threw themselves on the deer anyway. While fourteen or so animals ate, five or six acted as guards. The sounds of rending flesh, the soft whinings of satisfaction, were absolutely horrid and fascinating all at once. When Jack flashed his torch toward them, we saw that their tummies were so gorged it was impossible to eat anymore. They left at 2 a.m. as silently as they’d come.”

  Her parents didn’t want a whole page on red dogs, Rose knew this. They wanted more about the wedding, about Jack, to know she was happy, that she wasn’t sobbing in her pillow every night for Park House and them, but some things were too hard and too private to put into words.

  The honeymoon had not gone well. On their wedding night in Mahabaleshwar, she and Jack had eaten a quiet supper together in the guest house, which had smelled of damp, in a badly lit room, with another couple at the next table, who didn’t say one word to each other throughout the meal, which made Rose’s attempts at conversation sound even more stilted and ridiculous. She’d talked a bit about Middle Wallop and her ponies. She’d asked him to tell her about the history of the Third Cavalry, which he had at some length. His face had glowed; she’d never seen him so animated as he’d talked about how it wasn’t one of the grandest or even the oldest regiments, but how he was glad now he was in an Indian Cavalry regiment, rather than with a snootier English regiment, because he’d worked side by side with Indians and seen firsthand how able and how brave some of the local chaps were.

  After she’d finished her glass of wine, which was horrid and bitter and made her feel blurred and disconnected because she hardly ever drank, Jack gave her a funny look and then leaned across the table and whispered, “You are beautiful, do you know that, Rose?”

  And she’d bobbed her head and looked at her plate. Then he’d said in the same low voice, “Would you like to go upstairs ahead of me and get ready for bed?”

  The other couple swiveled their heads and watched her leave the room. She saw the man and woman exchange a secret smile because they’d seen the confetti on her coat as she arrived. They’d probably hear her as she walked across their bedroom floor, which was directly over the dining room. In the bathroom, she felt her fingers tremble as she tried to get the sponge thing in place. Twice it had pinged out of her fingers, once landing under the bath. She’d had to crawl underneath it, terrified she’d find a snake or a scorpion there. While she was washing it again, she had heard the door to the bedroom open and close.

  “Are you all right in there?” Jack called.

  “Fine…thank you,” she’d replied.

  “Come on, darling,” he’d called five minutes later.

  She had her foot on the bathroom stool and was still desperately trying to get the thing in. Sweating and trying not to cry, she finally felt it pop into place. The peach silk negligee seemed absurdly too much in this spartan room, and she almost tore it when she put her foot in the hem.

  When she’d stepped into the room, he didn’t say anything. He was lying underneath the mosquito net in a paisley silk dressing gown, pretending to read the paper. A fan whirred overhead.

  When he drew back the covers, she saw that he had put towels all over the sheets. He looked at her without smiling. “We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to,” he said.

  “I do want to,” she’d said without looking at him.

  Tor had told her that if you did lots of riding it didn’t hurt, but it did. Both of them were sweating with embarrassment when it was over, slithering and sliding in each other’s sweat and unable to look each other in the eye. No, it had not been a good start, and in the two nights that followed, it hadn’t got much better. In fact last night, it was he who had stayed in the bathroom for nearly an hour, with, oh horrors of embarrassment, an attack of gippy tummy. He’d run the tap and done a lot of coughing so she couldn’t hear, but it was mortifying for
both of them.

  At four o’clock in the morning he’d said in a snappy voice, “Good night, Rose, I know you’re awake.” And she’d lain wide-eyed with dismay in the darkness listening to some winged insect bashing against the netted window, and his breathing get hoarse and then more and more even, until she knew he was asleep.

  The train was passing through some parched-looking scrubland. The chai wallah had stopped at their seats to offer them first brick-colored tea, then fruit cake and a pile of hectically colored sweets. “I wouldn’t eat any of this, darling.” Jack had set aside his paper. “I bet Durgabai is cooking enough for an entire regiment this morning.”

  Durgabai was the name of one of the four new servants she had yet to meet. Oh Lord, she was nervous; maybe Jack, who was quieter even than usual, was, too. How long could one man read one paper for?

  Six hours later they arrived. A taxi picked them up at Poona Station and whisked them down through manicured treelined streets, past the club, past the polo ground. And now they’d arrived at a nondescript little bungalow, and Rose had her eyes closed and was beaming. As Jack lifted her over the threshold, the thin part of her calf caught quite painfully on the lock, but she appreciated the romantic gesture and kept on smiling.

  She opened her eyes to see a dark ring of sweat under Jack’s arm as he put her down.