East of the Sun Page 22

And Oliver wasn’t the only man interested in her. There was Simon, an ex-Etonian, out in India for the season, mainly for the shooting, who’d taken her out for dinner at the Bombay Yacht Club, and Alastair de Veer, a rather bloodless young civil servant, with whom a fox-trot on the veranda had led to a bombardment of calls that she’d found off-putting. Things were moving in the love department, often, if she was to be honest, faster than she felt she could control, so Frank’s phone call hadn’t ruffled her feathers at all.

  Since the night at Juhu Beach, she and Oliver had had several afternoon assignations in his flat at Colaba Beach. For several days she’d had to powder over the faint bruises he’d left on her neck and right shoulder.

  Ci had noticed. “Don’t let him mark you like that.” She’d raised one plucked eyebrow at Tor’s shoulder. “It’s common.”

  Which was when Tor, who had gone beetroot red, had tried to change the subject by asking Ci for a huge, huge favor. Would it be an awful bore if Rose came for one or two days the following week and had a what-the-hell day?

  Ci Ci had introduced Tor to the whole idea of what-the-hell days when she’d first arrived in Bombay. These were days of pure hedonism when you weren’t allowed to be a grown-up and only drank cocktails and saw amusing people and did exactly what you wanted to do for once. She said there was far too much seriousness in the world.

  When Ci smiled and replied, “Darling, what a good idea,” Tor’s heart lit up. The Mallinsons’ trip upcountry had fallen through, and Tor had felt the need to defer the invitation to stay that she had extended to Viva and Rose. It had been a shame, as she was longing for a good heart to heart with Rose. There really were times, like now, when so much was happening so fast, when nobody else would do. Rose really listened, really cared, whereas Ci, well, she was fun and wonderful and many things, but not someone you felt you could safely confide in. She was too impatient for that; also Tor was beginning to think it was rather mean of her to talk about other people so wearily as if they were nothing but a bore, or to read out her children’s letters in the squeaking voice she used for them. The girl Flora, who’d been in the san recently with some horrid-sounding thing called impetigo, seemed so homesick, so desperate for love.

  Also—or was Tor imagining this?—Ci was changing in other ways. Before, as soon as Geoffrey’s car had puttered down the slope, she’d been full of plans for them both; now she seemed more secretive, more aloof. She’d shouted at Tor the other day for hogging the phone.

  The servants seemed to have noticed, too. Yesterday, when Tor had asked Pandit where the memsahib was, he’d given her an odd sneering look, then opened his palms to show how empty they were. Very disrespectful. Afterward, she’d heard the servants laughing in the pantry.

  It made Tor wonder if everybody here knew something she didn’t, or if she was outstaying her welcome, which would be such a shame because she was still having the most wonderful time.

  Anyway, Ci had been instantly enthusiastic about Rose coming; she’d even offered to lend her the car. If she hadn’t had wet nail varnish, Tor would have kissed her.

  “Are you sure about the car? Why are you so nice to me?”

  Ci Ci, who wasn’t a great hugger, had popped a kiss into the air. “Because you’re fun and because your days are numbered. I got a letter from your mother this morning asking me to book your ticket home after the season ends in February.”

  It had taken Tor at least a couple of hours to absorb the full impact of this bombshell, and even then she refused to believe it was true. Surely someone would propose to her, or something would turn up. At any rate, it now seemed absolutely and crucially important for her to see Rose as soon as possible.

  Jack had answered the phone.

  “Please can Rose come out and play with me?” she’d said in her whiny-child voice. “I’ll scream till I’m sick if you don’t.”

  And, oh, what a stuffed shirt he was, he’d replied as though she’d been completely serious.

  “I’ll have to check diaries, but I think that will be fine.”

  He’d droned on about a visiting colonel and company orders as if she was asking him, too, which she definitely wasn’t. Then there was a brief whoompf down the line and a thump.

  “Tor, oh, darling Torrie,” Rose sang. “I’m so happy to hear you.”

  “Rose, this is an emergency,” she said. “You have to come and see me. You can take the Deccan Express and we’ll have a what-the-hell day and a good gup.”

  “A what?” Rose’s voice faded through the crackles.

  “Play truant, drink champagne, eat chocolates. Rose. I’m bursting, I have so many things to tell you.”

  “Hang on a tick.” Subdued murmurings in the background.

  “That’s absolutely fine, darling.” Rose was back. “Jack says the ladies’ carriage is perfectly safe.”

  Tor didn’t need Jack to tell her that.

  But then Jack had surprised Tor by ringing back an hour later and whispering, “I want to give Rose a surprise. Will you buy her a bottle of champagne when you go out to lunch? Tell her it’s from me.”

  She doubted whether Ollie would have thought of that.

  But then all men found Rose irresistible. Tor had accepted this long ago; she knew she’d always have to work harder.

  On Thursday the following week, Tor was sitting crouched forward in Ci’s car sweating with fear. Rose’s train was due in half an hour, and now she was at the wheel flying solo, wondering if she hadn’t slightly exaggerated her competence as a driver. She’d had three lessons in her father’s Austin, lurching up a muddy farm track, and a couple of drives in quiet lanes, but nothing that even remotely prepared her for the seething chaos of Bombay traffic.

  Also, Ci’s car, the bottle-green Model T Ford, had been shipped out to India in the hold of the Empress of India the year before and was as much revered as a household god at Tambourine. Every morning, Pandit polished the rims of its chrome headlights to an eye-piercing shine. He tenderly washed the running boards, using an old toothbrush to get between the cracks, and filled up its water tank with fresh water. He put beeswax on the leather seats, and refreshed the mints that lived in the glove box alongside Ci’s kid gloves and little onyx lighter. Tor was sure he would have put garlands of flowers around the mirrors and offerings of rice on the seats had he been allowed.

  Bug-eyed with concentration, she turned right into Marine Drive. The traffic wasn’t too bad here. At the traffic lights she stopped and took a deep breath. As she flipped out the little orange indicator and turned left into a whirling maelstrom of rickshaws, bullock carts, bicycles, horses, donkeys, and motor cars, her heart was thumping so loud she could hear it.

  “Help,” she cried, veering around the thin form of a rickshaw boy who’d casually drawn out in front of her.

  “Oh no!” at the bullock ambling across the street.

  “Sorry” to the banana man who had, bent double under his load, made his way barefoot across the street.

  Ten minutes later she drove through the gates of the huge and majestic Victoria Terminus Station. She swerved to avoid a beggar and came finally to a head-banging halt in a parking space underneath a palm tree.

  She parked the car and ran through the crowd just in time to see the Poona train pull in and Rose, looking almost bizarrely pink and gold in the middle of so many brown faces, step out of first class. She was wearing the pale blue dress they’d chosen together in London. Porters were fighting to carry her case.

  “Oh, Rose.” Tor flung her arms around her. “Dearest Piglet. I’ve missed you so.”

  As they drove back into the city again, Tor couldn’t resist showing off. “Cigarette, please, young Rose,” she said. “They’re in the glove box on the left. Oops!” She had to swerve to avoid a man selling peanuts at the gate. “Sorry!” she sang out gaily.

  “So,” said Tor when they stopped at the traffic lights, “here’s the plan: first stop, Madame Fontaine’s to get the hair done. There’s a girl there called
Savita who is a wonderful cutter. Then, lunch and a good gup at the club—I haven’t properly told you about my party yet—and then I’m going to drive you home to the Mallinsons’ for a chota peg and then some friends may call, and we might go out dancing.”

  Rose clapped her hands. “Oh, Tor,” she said, lying her head lightly on Tor’s shoulder. “I can’t believe you’re allowed to do all this.”

  “Well, I am,” said Tor, breathing out smoke in a film-starry way, “but for God’s sake, don’t tell my mother. The silly woman already wants me home.” She said this so lightly that Rose said nothing and Tor was glad—the last thing she wanted Rose to feel on a day like this was sorry for her.

  When they turned down Hornby Road they both shrieked at the sight of a small boy and his father urinating against a wall.

  “Isn’t it awful how they just let fly here,” said Tor and they started to laugh. “I thought we’d outlawed it. So rude!” she said in the voice of their old headmistress.

  “Oh, that reminds me.” Rose took a shopping list from her handbag. “One minor request. Would it be a frightful bore if we looked at net curtains at the Army and Navy? I’ve seen some plain white muslin ones in their catalog for twelve and six. I need some for my spare room.”

  “Curtains.” Tor was appalled. “Absolutely not. This is a what-the-hell day; you know the rules. Nothing but good times.”

  “Bully.”

  “Well, if you’re very good, by which I mean bad, you might be allowed to buy curtains on the way home.”

  Tor made them sound like a disease.

  Tor was just telling Rose that Frank had phoned last week when she had to brake hard to avoid a man with a cart full of oranges who was crossing the road. As the car stalled, the young man’s face suddenly appeared in the window on Tor’s side. His eyes were large and contemptuous, his purplish lips twisted. He was close enough to touch them.

  “Leave India,” he said distinctly.

  “What?” Rose was gaping at him.

  “Leave India,” he said again. He looked at them as though they disgusted him.

  “I don’t want to,” Rose said, and as they drove off the man stood in the middle of the road shaking his fist at them and shouting something they couldn’t hear.

  When they were at a safe distance, they both laughed shakily.

  “‘I don’t want to,’” hooted Tor. “That’s telling him. He won’t sleep a wink tonight.”

  “I hate being looked at like that.” Rose had stopped laughing. She wound up her window. “Do you think things are hotting up here?”

  “Oh, well, Geoffrey and Ci say it’s getting worse,” said Tor. “Trade thingamabobs, you know, sanctions, Gandhi stirring them all up, but they say most of the natives would be horrified if the British went home. What does Jack say?”

  “Not very much about things like that.” Rose dragged her gaze back from the crowded streets. “In fact, nothing at all.”

  Now they were in a room full of steam at Madame Fontaine’s salon, their necks stretched over basins. They could smell sandalwood and pine, and coffee brewing.

  “Memsahib.” Savita, a fragrant presence in an oyster-colored sari, had just slipped into the room. “Shampoo with olive oil or with henna?” she whispered.

  They decided on olive oil with rosewater and four young girls washed their two heads. Twenty fingers apiece massaging their heads and necks with sweet-smelling oils and then wrapping them like babies in warm towels.

  “Vera could pick up a few tips here,” said Tor. Vera was the owner of a drafty hairdressing shop in Andover where they’d both had their plaits lopped off, and later their hair put up in elaborate whorls for the London season. Vera had hands like a navvy’s, she bashed your head on her taps as she rinsed.

  “Memsahib,” one of the girls whispered at Tor’s elbow. “Refreshment.”

  The coffee tray was garnished with fat hibiscus flowers.

  While they sipped coffee, the girls came back. They were fascinated by Rose’s long blond hair, which they combed reverently.

  “People here are such good cosseters.” Rose smiled at Tor’s reflection in the mirror. “They really seem to enjoy looking after one.”

  “Are your servants like that?” Tor leaned forward, squinting at her eyebrows. “God, these caterpillars, I must pluck them.”

  “Well, not yet. We’re muddling along at the moment,” said Rose sensibly. “But I’m sure I’ll get them sorted out in time.”

  Tor gave Rose a look. There were times when Rose sounded quite tragically grown-up for a nineteen-year-old.

  “Now, Rose,” said Tor a few seconds later. “To return to the big question of the day. They charge eight rupees here for the first-time shingling, and this is the place for it. But don’t let me talk you into it and stop saying it won’t suit you—you’d look good with a cowpat on your head.”

  And they were giggling again, seven-year-old stuff really, but such a relief.

  “You have wonderful bone structure, and it’s going to get jolly hot soon. Just a thought,” Tor added innocently. “Your life, your hair.”

  Rose looped her hair under and turned her head experimentally in the mirror. “We’ve already got water restrictions up at the cantonment.”

  “Will Jack mind?”

  Rose hesitated and thought about this.

  “He’s never actually said he likes all this.” Rose lifted her hands under her hair and let it fall like spun silk to her shoulders. “So I honestly don’t know.”

  Tor was glad to hear Rose sound even faintly rebellious about him. If it was possible to be too good-natured, Rose was, and it worried Tor sometimes.

  The Bombay Yacht Club was full at one-fifteen when they arrived for lunch the next day. As Rose, shorn and a little shy, made her way with Tor across the room, the conversation dipped for a moment and one old man screwed his monocle in and opened his mouth into a gaping hole as he openly stared at her.

  “Rose,” muttered Tor, “the hair is a success.”

  Their waiter led them to a table in the corner of the room that overlooked the harbor. As he adjusted the shutter so they could better see the yachts below, a shaft of sunlight lit up their silver cutlery, the spotless glasses, and the finger bowls each with a slice of lemon in them.

  “Very lovely menu for today.” The handsome Italian maître d’ flicked large linen napkins onto their laps. “Fresh lobster from the harbor, sole Véronique, guinea fowl, and pheasant à la mode. Champagne is on ice, madam,” he murmured near Tor’s ear.

  “Tor,” Rose whispered in a sudden panic, “I don’t want to be a killjoy, but I can’t aff—”

  Tor held her hand up. “Hush, child. The champagne was ordered by your husband, Captain Jack Chandler, probably groveling because he made you miss my party.”

  “Jack!” Rose looked amazed. “Are you sure it was him?”

  “Quite sure.” Their eyes locked for a moment.

  The waiter poured the champagne; the bubbles made Rose’s nose wrinkle.

  “Can you believe how sophisticated we are nowadays?” she said after drinking a glass. “How incredibly grown-up.”

  “Rose.” Tor put down her glass. “I’ve only been here for three months. I don’t want to go home. I can’t—”

  “Please don’t,” said Rose. “I can’t bear it either. I—”

  “Let’s not talk about it yet,” said Tor quickly. “It’s too serious for champagne.”

  “Quite right,” said Rose. “Anyway, I’m sure half Bombay is already madly in love with you.”

  Tor opened her huge humorous eyes very wide and silently held up three fingers.

  “Oh, Tor! You beast!” Rose clapped her hand over her mouth. She was the best person to tell your secrets to. “Anyone special?”

  “Well, there’s a boy named Oliver, he’s a banker and we’re having quite a jolly time of it.”

  “Tor, I believe you’re blushing. Is he husband material?”

  “I don’t know.” Tor pulle
d her bread roll to bits. “Probably not—how can you tell? He’s good fun and very manly, but—”

  “Tor, please, can I say one absolutely serious thing?” Rose said. “Don’t, whatever you do, rush into it. It’s such a huge change in your life, and Middle Wallop isn’t so very awful. And you’ve got to know at the very least that you can, or I mean, that you do love the person.”

  They exchanged another quick look. And Tor got a stabbing feeling in her heart seeing how quickly Rose’s face had flushed with emotion. She wanted to ask, “Is everything all right, Rose? Does he make you happy?” but you didn’t ask Rose things like that. She was a soldier’s daughter.

  “Of course I am,” she would have said. “Everything is lovely.”

  What else was she going to say now unless it was absolutely hell and he was beating her every night?

  After two hours of talk, the waiter brought them coffee and sweetmeats. Tor leaned back in her chair and appraised the room in a genial way.

  “Oh God!” She suddenly froze. “Am I going completely mad or can you see what I see?”

  A group of around eight people, Indians and Europeans, were gathering up their things and preparing to leave, two tables down from where Tor and Rose were sitting.

  “Oh no!” Tor’s grip tightened. “It’s him.”

  Rose followed Tor’s gaze. “Who?”

  But Guy Glover had already seen them. He had a camera over his shoulders and when he saw Tor he got up, did an affected double-take, and swaggered over to see them.

  “Good Lord,” he drawled, “what a surprise.”

  “What are you doing here, Guy?” Tor did not return his smile. “Viva said you were ill and had to leave rather suddenly.”

  “I was ill.” Three people at his table, a Westernized-looking Indian and two very beautiful Indian girls, stood up. They were waiting for him to leave. “But I’m much better now.” He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “In fact,” he said, eyes darting, “I’ve got a job. I’m a photographer now.”