East of the Sun (17 page)

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.

After Rose and Jack’s car disappeared in a cloud of dust down the drive, she went up to her bedroom. It looked different already—the servants had been in during the reception, straightened the eiderdown on Rose’s bed, polished her table, and tidied all traces of her away. Tor lay down in her bridesmaid’s dress on Rose’s bed. She closed her eyes, and slept fitfully for about half an hour, dimly aware of the shouts and laughter of Ci’s guests in the distance, the clatter of dishes being taken away.

When she woke up, she went to the window, and watched the sun go down over the sea, and felt homesick for the first time since she’d arrived, a sense of the vastness of India all around her, of millions and millions of people not known to her out there having babies and dying and living and of herself being an unimportant little speck living on the wrong side of the world.

She took off her damp bridesmaid’s dress and went back to bed in her underwear. She pulled the sheet over her head and was almost asleep when she heard Ci shouting at her from the bottom of the stairs.

“Tor, come and play with me. I’m having a drink on the veranda.”

“Coming,” Tor shouted back reluctantly. She didn’t dare say no, but she still felt shy on her own with Ci Ci.

She got dressed and went downstairs. Ci was lying in the half-dark in a kimono on a wicker lounger; a cigarette drooped from a languid hand.

“I’m a rag,” she said. “How are you?”

She must have noticed Tor had been crying for she pushed
a glass of brandy toward her. They sat drinking together while the servants cleared away the wreckage of the day. Then Ci Ci said out of the blue, “Most Bombay weddings are damp squibs, darling. But she’ll be happy by now.” She smiled at her slyly. “He’s a wonderful-looking man.”

Tor looked at her. “I don’t like him,” she said. “I think he’s…”

“Think he’s what?” Ci sounded impatient.

“Cold,” said Tor bravely. “I kept wanting him to look happier.”

“What a silly thing to say, darling,” Ci protested. “None of us even know him.” As if that proved anything. “And besides,” she added, “most people aren’t exactly childhood sweethearts when they marry out here.”

An awkward pause followed, they both took sips of their drinks, and then Ci stubbed out her cigarette and took Tor’s hand in hers. She ran her fingernails along the palm of Tor’s hand, and said lightly, “Might a chap say something? This is probably as good a time as any.”

“Of course.”

“Don’t be too fussy, darling; I’d hate to have to send you home a returned empty.”

Tor winced. Ci laughed as if she was half joking, but Tor knew she wasn’t.

Ci put a fresh cigarette in her holder, lit it, and as the smoke cleared, gave her a long appraising look.

“Darling,” she said after a longish pause, “would you mind if I was incredibly frank with you? Because I think I could help you if you’d let me.”

“Of course.” Tor steeled herself for the worst.

“You’re a big girl, aren’t you, but you don’t have to be if you don’t want to be. All it would take would be no cake for two weeks, lemon and water in the morning, and I rather think,” Ci stretched out and held a lump of Tor’s hair in her hand, “we
need a hair conversation with Madame Fontaine. With half an inch off this, you’ll be fighting them off with a stick. Do you want to fight them off with a stick?”

“Yes,” said Tor, and even though at this precise moment she felt she could have died of shame, she made herself smile. “I rather think I do.”

But then, the following night, something amazing happened. Ci Ci walked into Tor’s room with Pandit behind her, his arms piled high with bright silk dresses, beaded shifts, shawls of shivery softness, headbands, feathers, necklaces, even earrings. Ci took the clothes from his arms and flung them carelessly on the bed.

“Darling, do me a favor and keep these,” she said. “I need an excuse to buy some new clothes.”

“I couldn’t!” Tor, still smarting from the conversation the night before, felt both thrilled and shamed.