East of the Sun (25 page)

“
Blackwood’s.
But that’s amazing, wonderful,” said Rose. “Why didn’t you say immediately?”

“Because I can’t quite believe it myself,” said Viva. “My first
few weeks here were so dreadful. I could hardly afford to pay my bill at the YWCA, but then I got work at the children’s home. I’ve been writing at night.”

“Gosh, how ripping.” Tor heard the flatness in her voice and tried to smile. She sipped her drink. “What now?”

“Well,” Viva hesitated, “I’m going to try and get the children at the home where I work to tell their own stories in their own words.”

“Heavens,” said Tor. “That does sound interesting.”

“But do admit,” said Rose, “it must be horribly depressing at times—those poor little orphans.”

“That’s exactly the point,” Viva’s eyes were blazing now, “and that’s exactly why I’m glad I’m working there, because almost nothing about it is how I expected it to be, so many clichés, so many misunderstandings. Those children are poor, but they’re full of life, of hope. They laugh far more than most of us do, more than English children even.

“And yes, I’m white and I’m supposed to be helping them, but sometimes I almost hate them, too—their poverty, their need, their complete lack of anything. And this is what I’m trying to think out for myself: all the lies, all the ways we have of trying to make life simple for ourselves by putting people into boxes marked black, white, good, bad, when all of us are victims of our own prejudices. To give you one example: there are two women of high caste at the home who never want to eat lunch with me. In their eyes I’m the dirty one, I’m the untouchable. To give you another, there’s a little Muslim girl at the home right now being sent to Coventry because of her religion, and there’s nothing we can really do about it. It runs so deep.”

“Gosh.” Rose folded up her napkin and put it carefully into the silver ring. “I do admire you. I don’t think I could do it.”

“Yes, you could,” said Viva bluntly. “My life is probably a lot easier than yours. It’s a question of choice.”

Ah, choice,
thought Tor. She’d been too distracted to pay attention to all of Viva’s speech, but the part she’d heard had brought on the sinking feeling again. What had she done, really done in the last four months? Absolutely nothing apart from getting thin and then getting fat again and losing her virginity and going to lots and lots of parties and now getting herself into this hideous mess.

“So, what about you, Tor?” Viva was looking at her over the rim of her wineglass.

“Oh, I’ve had masses of fun here,” said Tor distractedly. “Masses…it’s been balloon.”

She really couldn’t talk about it yet—especially now.

They had coffee on the veranda and some crème de menthe for old time’s sake, even though it made Tor feel a little drunker. While they’d been eating, one of the servants had lit a flare path of small lamps whose flames flickered down the garden path right down to the sea. From their chairs, they could hear the soft flopping of waves falling down at the bay, a silky sound.

“Tor, you’re so lucky to live here,” said Rose. “I think it’s the most wonderful house I’ve ever been in.”

Tor burst into tears. She felt in the pocket of her dress and handed a piece of paper over.

“‘
Empress of India,
’” Rose read out. “‘Miss Victoria Sowerby, 25 May. Single.’” Rose examined the ticket, turned it over and over. “Oh, damn it, Tor,” she said quietly. “I can’t bear it. And you’ve been so brave all evening.”

Tor’s mother had often warned her that crying in public was a complete nonstarter, but Tor had cried properly then—great heaving, gulping sobs—she’d made such an awful mess of things.

They sat on either side of her holding her hands. “I’m sorry,” she said eventually. “I’m being the most awful wet, and spoiling
everyone’s evening, and I knew I had to go home eventually, but I’d so hoped my mother had forgotten about me—I was supposed to go back in March.” She gave a strangled gulp and wiped her eyes.

Rose said they should go upstairs to Tor’s bedroom, for the night servant had stirred in the shadows, they’d seen the whites of his fascinated eyes, and this was private.

“Good night, Pandit. Good night, Arun,” Tor called out gaily on her way upstairs as if she hadn’t a care in the world.

It was too hot to sit in her bedroom, so they went out onto the balcony and sat down on three rattan chairs, Tor in the middle, Viva and Rose on either side. They took their stockings off, and the sea breeze on their bare legs felt good.

“So what happened to Ollie?” Rose asked. “I know for a fact,” she told Viva, “he was absolutely mad about her.”

Tor felt so grateful to Rose for saying this.

“You see,” Tor explained to Viva, “I was almost engaged to a man named Oliver. He works for a stockbroker out here. We met at a party at the Taj and fell madly in love.”

The madly in love bit was an exaggeration, but there was only just so much pain you could let out all at once.

“I’d been on this very strict diet and lost absolutely pounds,” Tor assured them, as if they needed to understand this first before they could believe. “We had a wonderful few weeks—you know, picnics, parties, moonlit swims. He brought me presents: flowers, jewelry, a tin of red shoe polish.”

“Red shoe polish!” both girls said in unison.

“Well, you know how I love red shoes,” Tor explained to Rose. “And I don’t know if you know this, but you can’t get proper polish here and Ollie knew a man. Oh, he was so much fun,” Tor wailed inconsequentially.

She sighed again and blew her nose. Part of her had always known of course that Ollie, with his tousled hair and his dinner jackets stuffed with cigarettes and betting tickets, was a
bad boy, but that was part of the fun. Who wanted one of those district commissioner types with white legs and wiry hair on their knees? But the problem with Ollie was that the fun never stopped, or, as Ci had put it, the dinner jacket never went back in the cupboard—a bit rich coming from Ci who had never worked a day in her life.

“So what happened then?” asked Rose. A cluster of green insects had come to a sizzling end on the bulb of a lamp near Tor’s chair. Rose picked them up and threw them neatly over the balcony railings.

“Well, we went to this marvelous party at the Taj Mahal, a full-moon party, a wonderful night. The terrace was lit up with candles. The moon was huge. He told me I was the most beautiful girl there and that he loved me.” Tor looked at them defiantly: this was her story and she could tell it any way she wanted, and besides, there was plenty of humiliation to come.

“Ci left me there. She said Ollie could take me home, and anyway, I’m not absolutely certain she’s not having an affair herself, she left with another man. Anyway, Ollie and I got into this tonga. It was so romantic, clip-clopping around the streets at night. We went along the seafront and we could see all the lights from the ships. When we got to the esplanade, near the crossroads that turns into town, he turned to me and he asked me to marry him.”

What he’d actually said, or mumbled because he’d had rather too much to drink, was that she was the sort of girl he should marry if he had any sense, but sitting there with Viva on one side and Rose on the other, she felt for a moment proud and sad and very badly done by, like a proper heroine.

“I don’t suppose you’ll be too shocked to hear that I went back to his flat that night.”

In fact, he’d been sick on the stairs. She’d put him in silk pajamas, he’d crashed first on the floor and then into bed.

“I only meant to stay for a cup of coffee,” Tor continued,
“but he begged me to stay, and then…well, I’m not ashamed to say that I have been to bed with him several times, because he did say he loved me.”

And, even now, Tor remembered the brief but blazing triumph of that moment—girls like Rose and Viva could never understand it. He had said he loved her…sort of. But once again, the following morning while he was asleep, she’d looked at him and her mind had raced foolishly ahead: children had been named, letters mentally composed to her mother saying, in essence, “See! I did it! I’m going to be married! Married! Married! I’m never coming home.”

“And then what?” Rose and Viva were agog.

“Oh.” Tor’s story went down like a burst parachute. “Well.” She gave a deep sigh. “The next morning, when I got up and went to the bathroom, I found some face creams and half a bottle of White Shoulders in his medicine chest. I shouldn’t have looked but I had a headache.

“When I asked him if he had another woman, he flew into a terrible rage.”

In fact, it had been worse than that, he’d said, “God, you’re boring, Tor. What did you expect?” As if it had been her fault all along.

“Oh, what a
rat,
” said Rose. “What a complete
toad.
So then what happened?”

“Nothing.” Tor had no energy left for embellishment.

Nothing was right. No tearful apologies, no late-night phone calls professing undying love. Nothing.

“But maybe the White Shoulders belonged to a visiting aunt or something,” said Rose.

“No,” said Tor.

Three days later, using a fake Scottish accent, she’d phoned his office and asked to speak to him. “Is that Mrs. Sandsdown?” the voice at the other end had said. “No,” she’d said, “it’s Victoria Sowerby.”

“Oh heavens! Sorry!” the voice had said. As she hung up she heard people laughing.

“Married!” Rose was appalled.

“Yes,” said Tor flatly. “Wife in England. I suppose everybody knew but me. Not only married but with lots of other girls, too. Trust me to pick him.”

“But lots of other people can’t have known,” said Rose, “else Ci would have warned you off him.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter now.” Tor picked another dead insect off the lamp globe and put it in the wastepaper basket. “Back to Middle Wallop and my mother. Spoiled goods,” she said bitterly.

“Oh, Tor, please don’t call yourself that, it’s horrible,” said Rose.

“That’s what the old biddies at the club call girls like me,” Tor told them. “Ci Ci will, of course, dine out on it after I’ve gone. She’s not very nice, you know.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, I can’t bear this.” Viva had stood up. Her eyes blazed fiercely in the moonlight. “You can’t let this happen to you. Not like this. I mean, you could work—you could go upcountry and be a governess, you could teach here. This is ridiculous.”

“No, no, no.” Tor held off this deluge with her hand. “Shut up for a moment, there’s more to come. Much worse. I’m three weeks late with the curse. I’m having a baby.”

Poona, May 1929

J
ack was out on the Poona Cantonment number two practice ground lining up polo balls and smashing them as if to smash the universe into smithereens. Bula Bula, his favorite polo pony, a willing creature who would have lain down and died for him if necessary, was panting and foaming with sweat and Jack’s entire body blazed with heat, but some demon was driving him today.

Standing tall in his stirrups and perfectly balanced, Jack cantered toward a line of balls about fifty yards from the goal mouth.

Thwack.
He leaned down and made a fluid shot under Bula’s neck that sent the ball like a bullet through the scuffed posts.

“I say, sahib! Good one, sir!” shouted Amit, his ghora wallah. He was holding the next pony for him to ride.

If only life could be this easily won,
Jack thought. He hated being in such a foul mood on a horse.

He gathered Bula up with his thighs and seat bones until he had him short and bouncing like a little rubber ball, and
then he hit another one, hard.

Thwack.
That one for his new commanding officer, Colonel Dewsbury, cold, stuffy bastard who’d suddenly announced in the fifth month of Rose’s pregnancy that leave for all junior officers had been canceled indefinitely. After months of messing about and uncertainty, part of the regiment were definitely moving now to Bannu, one of the most dangerous places on God’s earth. And
crack.
That one for that groveling little bloke in the mess who’d suddenly remembered a bar bill from months ago from his stag party. The same month,
thwack,
he’d had to pay for the furniture he’d hired in a panic after Rose came out, not to mention his other bill from his
Darzi
for that sodding suit he’d had made for the wedding party, and would no doubt never wear again.

He galloped the full length of the polo field again, lifting himself in his stirrups and slashing left and right with his polo mallet, until his horse’s sides were heaving and the veins stood out on his neck.

Calm down, man,
he told himself as he walked back to the stables.
None of this is Bula’s fault.

Or Rose’s. When he looked up, he saw her watching him. She was sitting on a bench about seventy-five yards away, an innocent speck of blue against a wide horizon, and the sight of her brought shame and, for one blessed moment, a feeling of tenderness.

It wasn’t her fault that he’d wildly underestimated the expense involved in getting married and maintaining a wife, or that if he was sent up north, he’d probably have to sell one of the horses to pay his bills. Or that Sunita had written to him out of the blue last week to tell him she was married now. She was very, very happy, she said, and much more settled. “
I hope you are happy, too,
” she’d added innocently. He’d cried when he read that.

He cantered over to where Rose was sitting. When he came to a halt, Bula put his head about an inch from the ground, his sides still heaving.

“Poor Bula.” She patted the horse’s neck. “It’s much too hot for everyone, isn’t it?”

She shot Jack an unhappy smile. She didn’t understand him any better than he did—normally, he kept this horse in cotton wool and the big match against the Calcutta Light was coming up on Saturday.

“I’ve brought you some lemonade, darling,” she said. “I was frightened you’d get heatstroke.”

“Kind girl,” he said. As he leaped from his horse, he felt the sweat squelch on the inside of his boots. The glass was up to 105 again and all of them had had a string of broken nights, particularly poor Rose, who tossed and turned all night and couldn’t get comfortable.

Even though the mound under Rose’s blue smock was small and neat and barely discernible, it seemed to him she waddled as they walked back to the stables, her face scarlet, blond hair escaping in damp tendrils from underneath her hat.

“Are you seeing old Patterson today?” he asked.

“Maybe,” she said. She glanced at him anxiously.

Patterson was the red-faced army doctor who would, in four months’ time, deliver her baby. Rose seemed to hate talking about him, almost as much as he hated the thought of the man’s thick hairy fingers going anywhere near his wife. When they’d all bumped into each other at the club a few nights ago (impossible to avoid the fellow in this ant colony), Patterson, slightly tight, had said, “So how’s our bonny wee lass feeling?” and leered at her as if they both owned her now. And to Jack’s shame, the anger he’d felt then, the strong desire to land one on the man’s chin, had been his strongest emotion so far about this baby. Before that he’d felt nothing more than a numb sur
prise, a sense of unreality. For the baby was a mistake, and as his new CO had more or less pointed out, it was bad enough getting married so young, but having a “sprog,” as he’d put it, was “really jumping the gun.”

Yes, the night at the club had been the worst. It was the day that Sunita’s letter had arrived.
I hope you are happy, too.
He was sitting there drinking more whiskeys than usual, and the thought kept breaking in on him, a spasm of pain as real as any physical pain, like breaking a bone or toothache.

There Rose had been opposite him. Dumpling Rose now, for her face had definitely grown rounder, in her blue sprigged maternity dress, so cordial, so kind, so right for him, so beautiful really, and thoughts of Sunita breaking in on him like a child shouting in the middle of a carefully rehearsed concert.
I miss you, Sunita. I want you still. Those were the best days of my life.

“Just a lime juice and soda for me, thank you.”

Rose had smiled at the waiter, who had smiled back, tenderly, lovingly, in the way Jack wished he could smile at her. One of the many things he respected about Rose was that she was so thoroughly nice to everyone. She was fair. She genuinely liked other people.
Sunita, Sunita, let down your long hair.
Rose would never become one of those monstrous mems who patronized or bullied their servants. Rose had the right sort of good manners, based on sympathy and respect, and the staff at home already adored her. Durgabai was far more excited about this new baby than he was.

And Rose was fearless, too, in her quiet way. Jack was the frightened one—the Poona graveyard was stuffed with English babies who’d died of typhoid and dog bites, malaria and heat. Babies, and their mothers. Patterson, insensitive oaf, had a whole range of “funny stories” he told new mothers.

He had told one that night, one of his favorites.

“Lovely little chap,” he had boomed, “sitting happily in
his mother’s arms having a bottle,
huge
group of monkeys appeared, snatched baby and jumped from branch to branch waving it above their heads.
Hwah, hwah, hwah.
Hope you’ll be more careful.”

Rose had laughed politely, even though she’d heard it before. She had shot Jack a “rescue me” look.

He moved closer. “So how was Tor?”

He had cordoned her off by sitting down beside her and putting an arm around her shoulder. She looked surprised—it was rare for him to touch her in public, still less to ask her about Tor. “You haven’t told me anything yet.”

“I didn’t think you’d be interested,” she had said. And then he’d been embarrassed to see her chin wobbling. When he had glanced up at the bar, Patterson still had his eye on her. Leering. Noticing.
It must be her condition,
he decided. She’d turned the taps on a bit in the first three months of their marriage, but she hardly ever cried now.

“I’ll get a rickshaw,” he had said hurriedly. “You can tell me on the way home.”

“Of course I’m interested,” he said. “You shouldn’t keep things like that to yourself.”

He was sorry it sounded like a reproof; he was trying to be nice.

She’d just told him that Tor would be leaving on May 25. She was leaning wearily against the soiled canvas of the rickshaw. “I should have told you before, but it seems so…”

“So what?”

“Sudden.”

“You’ll miss her.” He heard her swallow in the darkness.

“Yes.”

He touched her hand but found he didn’t want to hold it. The threat of tears had put him off.

They drove through the deserted streets of the cantonment in silence. There were pools of light in the darkness near gates where the night watchmen sat and behind them smoke from fires in the native quarters. Jack, looking over Rose’s shoulder, was thinking that he wished he could have liked Tor better, but he didn’t. There had always been some sort of rivalrous edge to their conversations that he didn’t understand, but which seemed to involve Rose.

Tor had also exasperated him by not seeming to understand the rules of the game between men and women in India. Bluntly put, she wasn’t pretty enough to get away with being so noisy and outspoken. She needed to pipe down, to listen more, to be more grateful with what came her way. A cruel assessment, he recognized, but other men thought like that, too, and pretty women like Rose would naturally never understand it.

“But I’m surprised no one took her up.” He’d decided to be tactful, particularly since Rose was in a state. “She’s not bad-looking.”

He heard her gasp, and then an echo of it as she looked out of the window shaking her head.

“Is that all that really matters to men?” Rose’s voice was low and bitter. “Tor’s funny and loving and loyal, and I think she’s beautiful, too. Have you never noticed her eyes? Ugh!” She broke off in frustration.

“Rose, all I said was she’s not bad-looking,” he said. He could hear his voice, deep and furious, a hint of push me further and I’ll really explode; he didn’t like what he heard but she shouldn’t raise her voice to him like that. “And anyway, we’ll all be kicked out soon.”

That was another thing the women didn’t understand, how bloody tenuous it all was getting. There was a terrible brouhaha going on in Congress, the CO was constantly briefing them about that now. In the white corner, Gandhi urging peace; in
the red, those baying for blood.

“Anyway,” Rose was not going to lie down about this, “I’m determined to go to Bombay and say good-bye to her when her ship leaves. I’ve got to.”

“What about the baby? I don’t think it’s right for you to be seen like that.”

“He can come, too. If it is a he.”

“Well, it sounds to me as if you’ve made up your mind,” he said.

“I have,” she said.

He was trying not to lose his temper—it wasn’t up to her to tell him where she was going and when. And then he felt relieved. They’d be in Bombay for the long weekend of the polo tournament and earlier in the day he’d decided against all his better judgment to see Sunita one more time.

I hope you’re happy, too.
Such banal words; they’d hurt so much. He wasn’t going to spoil her happiness, just to see her one last time, he’d argued with himself. If Rose insisted on doing what she wanted to, well, he could, too.

Later that night, unable to sleep, he got up and walked into the kitchen for a glass of water. Outside on the veranda, the punkah wallah who worked the fan had fallen asleep with the string that worked the fan still attached to his toe. He roused him and sent him to bed.

It was a quarter past three, the air felt soupy and thick, the walls of the little house seemed to be closing in on him, and he could hardly breathe. He went into the living room and was sitting in an armchair reading the letter again when Rose walked in.

Through the thin cotton of her nightdress, he could see the outlines of her tummy, her thighs, her growing breasts. Half groggy with sleep, she sat down on the armchair facing him.
She lifted her hair from her neck and blew out air.

“I can’t sleep,” she said. “It’s too hot.”

As he lifted his eyes to hers, he saw colored lizards dart across the wall behind her head and felt his whole life crash before his eyes.

“Jack,” she said, “why are you crying?”

He hadn’t realized.

“Am I?” he said.

“Yes, you are.”

He didn’t want her to walk over to him—how unfair it was of him to think of the word “waddle” even then—or to sit on the arm of his chair and stroke the side of his face. If she hadn’t done that he might have held it all inside, but he’d felt his guts about to explode with sorrow at the mess he had made of things, and this sweet girl trying to work it all out.

He sat there frozen while she tried to hug him.

“It’s me, isn’t it?” she said in a low voice, almost as if she’d been expecting this all along. “I’m doing this to you; I’m making you so unhappy. I can feel it.”

He tried to tell her no. He buried his head in his hands so she wouldn’t see how much he hated his cowardice. It would be so easy now to blame her for this.

“It’s not you,” he managed to say. Two of the colored lizards were copulating behind her head.

“Is it the baby then? You didn’t seem very excited when I told you.” Her voice was gentle, there was no reproach.

Excited! No, that would not be the word. If he’d said what was in his heart that night, he would have said,
I’m angry at you for taking over my life in this way, for making me feel so out of control, for being such a duffer with your sponge thing that you can’t even use it properly. I don’t want my wings clipped in this way, I can’t afford it, I don’t know enough about you. I’m not even sure I love you yet.