East of the Sun (42 page)

“But Viva,” Tor suddenly turned to her, “finish your story. What happened to that little rat Guy?”

So she told him about Dr. Ratcliffe and his home. How well he was doing there until he was whisked away.

“He’s gone back to England now. It’s the saddest thing. His father got him a commission in the army. He’ll be a fighting man soon. Can you imagine anything he’ll be less suited for? What do they see when they look at him?”

“We do not see things as they are, but as we are,” Toby said quietly. “That’s from the Talmud.”

“I’ve been guilty of that,” she told him.

“And Viva,” Tor could be remarkably persistent when the mood took her, “sorry to ask all these questions, but you’ll be gone soon and I need to know. Where will you move to if the home does have to close?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m pretty sure they will close us down soon.”

“Heavens.” Tor’s eyes were like searching headlamps when she turned them on you like this. “Won’t that be a disaster for those children?”

“Not for all of them.” She hated the way her voice had started to tremble. “Some of them can’t wait to leave. The status of orphans in Indian society is so low, you see. Oh, they’ll stay if they must, but we’re not always their salvation. Some of them pine to live out on the streets again.”

“Any idea where you’ll go?” Tor asked.

“Heavens.” Viva felt trapped again. “I hadn’t really thought about it. I—”

“Have one of these.” Toby pushed a box of chocolates in her direction. He seemed to be trying to come to her rescue again. “By the way,” he said, “I’ve been meaning to ask you, whereabouts in India did your parents live? Wasn’t there something about a trunk you’re supposed to pick up?”

Thinking that she wouldn’t notice, Tor put down her pud
ding spoon and mouthed, “No,” to Toby. After a brief moment of panic he went on smoothly, “When I was a boy we moved all the time, too—my father was a scientist, but he worked for the Forestry Department in India for years, so I never really knew where I lived either. Quite fun in a way, but the only problem is”—Viva saw him glance at Tor as if to say, “How am I doing?”—“the only problem is, one’s inner globe is always slightly spinning.”

“Mine isn’t,” said Tor. She stood up and put her arms around him. “I absolutely love it here.”

Viva watched them with hunger. How at Tor’s touch he squeezed his eyes shut and laid his head against hers.

And when Rose left to check on the baby, Viva, sitting surrounded by empty wineglasses, felt a wave of desolation sweep over her. She shouldn’t have come; she wasn’t ready yet.

“Viva,” Rose had come back, “how would you feel if we asked Frank again, not to stay but just for Christmas lunch? He was this very good-looking ship’s doctor,” she explained to Toby. “We were all very spoony on him.”

Viva felt a spurt of anger—how trivial she made it sound.

“Toby would like him,” Tor added.

They looked at each other, and Viva swallowed.

“I’d rather you didn’t,” she said. “He’s said no once.”

They left it at that.

T
he following morning, Tor said that Viva and Rose should go for a ride on their own together.

Toby drew a map for them. The school, he said, had twenty acres of riding tracks, one of which led to a lake that was a lovely spot for a picnic. To make it even more fun, Freddie could go with them on the school’s Shetland pony. He could go on the leading rein. They had a special little basket chair with straps for babies, called a howdah, which he could loll around in like an emperor. Toby said the groom could walk beside Freddie for five or ten minutes and then lead him home so that the girls could have a really good gallop.

A really good gallop.
Viva felt her stomach tighten at the idea.

An hour or so later, she and Rose were trotting between an avenue of poplar trees that led into the wood. Viva’s pony, a gray Arab wearing a scarlet bridle, was delicate and frisky and made bug eyes at everything that moved: parrots, leaves, spots of sunlight on the path.

Every muscle in her body was starting to clench with fear.

Over breakfast, when Toby asked whether she could ride, she’d said, almost without thinking, “Oh, lots as a child.” But one of the problems of having no parents or brothers and sisters was that you said things like that without ever really knowing what was real. Did “lots” mean four or five times in total? Every week? She hadn’t a clue really.

A few seconds earlier, when both ponies had shied at a quail, she’d almost fallen off while Rose sat poised and queenly as though she and the horse were one.

One clear memory she did have was riding with her father in Simla. She must have been about three, maybe four. He’d come thundering up the track on his horse, leaned down from his saddle, plucked her from the ground as if she was a toy or a feather, sat her in front of his saddle, and cantered off again toward the horizon. She’d felt the horse explode with energy beneath them, felt the firmness of his hands holding her to him like the still center of a spinning wheel.

Her best memory.

“What were you thinking about?” Rose must have been trying to talk to her—she was squinting at her from under her riding helmet.

“Nothing much.”

“Oh!” Rose gave her a skeptical look. “Well, look, I’m going to give Freddie a kiss and send him home with the
syce
now.” She leaped down and adjusted Freddie’s bonnet over his scarlet face and righted his soft little body, which had slipped down into the basket. “The poor little chap looks done in.”

Rose watched him go until the tiny Shetland was swallowed up by trees.

“Right.” She swung up into the saddle again. “Now you and I can have some fun.”

“Lovely.” Viva’s stomach was in knots.

They rode through an open wicker gate; a flock of green parrots flew off into the woods. Ahead of them a long winding
track led up a short incline between misty trees. Rose said it was the perfect place for a gallop.

“Ready?”

“Ready.”

Rose disappeared in a cloud of dust.

When Viva let go of the reins, her pony took off like a rocket, fighting for its head, and then all Viva felt was some pure form of terror.
The closest you’ll ever get to flying,
with the wind bashing your face, horse’s feet thundering underneath you. On and on they sped, the scrub whizzing by and then through a muddy track past cinnamon-scented trees; a couple of logs had to be jumped, and then, when they halted at the top of the track, the ponies were slick with sweat, and they were laughing and far more relaxed with each other.

“Oh, what bliss!” Rose, cheeks flushed and with her blond hair let loose, suddenly looked about twelve. “What absolute and utter bliss.” She and her dark bay horse danced in unison with each other for a second, two handsome creatures in their prime.
She is beautiful,
thought Viva,
and she is brave.

When they stopped talking, they could hear the burblings of the stream that followed the track, the thud of their horses’ hooves on red dirt. When they’d got to the stream, they let the horses drop their heads to suck up a few greedy mouthfuls, and on the other side of the bank a heron flew away. Viva felt the light touch of Rose’s hand on her sleeve.

“You look so much better, Viva.”

“Do I?” Viva picked up her reins. Something about Rose’s worried smile made her feel defensive.

“Are you really all right.”

“Yes, yes, this is perfect.” Viva put her hand on her pony’s neck. “I’m glad you suggested it.”

“I didn’t actually mean that.”

“Oh,” she said, “well, whatever it was, I am fine. What about you?”

Rose gave her a strange look. “Truth or flannel?”

“Truth.”

Rose said, “I don’t know where to start. So much has changed in this year.”

“Really! How?”

A hank of blond hair had fallen down around Rose’s face. She thrust it under her hat.

“Coming here. India. Everything. I came without giving it a second’s thought.”

“Rose! That’s not true; you are easily the most sensible of all of us.”

“Oh, come on, Viva. You must have noticed what a baby I was.” Two beads of sweat had started to fall down the side of Rose’s face. “Such a baby.”

Viva felt wary. Rose seemed suddenly very wound up.

“D’you think anything really prepares you for India?” Viva said. “It’s like a vast onion: every layer you unpeel shows you something else you didn’t know about it, or yourself.”

“I’m not just talking about India,” Rose went on doggedly. “I’m talking about getting married to Jack. It was so awful at first.”

Viva was so shocked her scalp prickled. She’d always assumed Rose was silent about Jack because she didn’t want to gloat about her handsome husband in front of Tor.

“Absolutely ghastly,” Rose insisted. “I felt so shy, so homesick, so completely out of my depth with him and everything.”

“Gosh,” said Viva after a while. “How is it now?” She was hating this almost as much as Rose was.

“Well,” Rose fiddled with her reins, “some of it got better—at least the bedroom side of things—at first it seemed so
rude
.”

They burst out laughing and a partridge flung itself croaking out of the undergrowth.

“But it’s better now?” Viva asked cautiously. “You know, the other things.”

“No, well, only partly…” Rose was faltering. “You see, it got worse. Much worse.”

“How?”

“Well,” Rose gave a deep sigh. “Do you mind me talking like this?”

“Of course not,” Viva lied. This was awful and she knew that Rose would regret her confidences later.

“Something happened. A horrid thing.” There was a long silence before Rose found her voice again. “In Poona. I went to the club by myself one day. Jack was away at camp, so it was just me and a few of the usual old biddies in the sort of ladies’ area of the bar. One of them, a Mrs. Henderson, a notorious old gossip, was being generally nasty about almost everyone: how bad they were with their servants, or how little they entertained and so forth. It was all very, very boring and I hardly listened to a word of it, but then she seemed to quite deliberately bring up the subject of men and how they could be such animals. I felt this sort of special silence fall and everyone trying not to look at me and feel embarrassed. It was such a funny moment, and then Mrs. H. said, ‘Gosh, have I put my size sixes in it?’ She really was about as subtle as a ton of bricks. And everyone changed the subject.

“I was so wet behind the ears I might have forgotten about it, or put it down to Mrs. H. being a clot, but then a few nights later, I went into the sitting room and Jack was sitting there reading a letter. He was weeping. When I asked him why, well, you know Jack, well, you don’t really, but he’s sometimes
hideously
honest.” Rose heaved a big sigh. “He confessed straightaway.”

“About what?”

“About his other woman.”

“Oh no.” Viva put her hand on Rose’s arm. “How horrible. Was it true?”

She didn’t have to ask, Rose’s lovely profile was all bent out of shape at the thought of it.

“Yes, it was. He didn’t have to tell me; in some ways, I still think it might have been better if he hadn’t. Even though it finished when he married me, all the time when we were on the ship he was seeing her. He said he’d found it hard to say good-bye. I was so shocked at first I prayed the baby would die and then I thought I would probably have to kill myself. I know that sounds dramatic but I felt so far from home and so awful.”

“Was it somebody you knew?”

“No.” Rose took a deep shuddering breath. “Her name is Sunita. She’s Indian. She’s a beautiful, educated Bombay girl. When I asked him if he loved her, he said he felt immensely grateful to her, that she’d taught him so much, and that she was a fine person. In other words, he loved her.”

“Oh, Rose, what a thing.”

“It was.” Rose was stroking her horse’s mane and breathing in and out hard. “It was the worst thing ever and I was too proud to tell anyone.”

The horses moved through a line of trees, sunlight dappling Rose’s face.

“That was why I insisted on coming up to Ooty that time with you. But when I got there, I felt such a fraud. I was crying so much I’m surprised I didn’t wash the baby away, and you were both so thrilled for me.”

“Oh, Rose.” Viva felt sick. “You should have told us. That’s what friends are for.”

“Viva,” Rose gave her a straight look, “that is a little rich coming from you.”

Viva ignored this for now. “So what did you do?”

“Well, I’ve really never felt so mis. I felt I loathed him for a while and I’ve never loathed anyone in my life before, apart from one awful girl at school who was nasty to everyone. One
of the most infuriating things was the way he apologized to me; it was so stiff.” Rose did his voice. “‘Look, sorry, Rose, but men are men and these things happen.’ And then he went all sulky as if somehow this was my fault. Oh, I was livid. It wasn’t that I wanted him to grovel, but I was so hurt and the worst thing was that I had actually started to really love him. Not like in books, or in plays, but small things: like having his arm around me in bed, caring about what he ate, even worrying about his constipation—he’s one of the few people I know in India who get it—don’t laugh, Viva, it’s true.” She wiped some of the sweat off her horse’s neck and flopped some of it on the grass.

When they reached the lake, three herons flew away with a light flapping of wings.

“I hope you don’t mind me telling you all this.” Rose looked pale as they sat down together on the rug.

“I think you’ve been very brave,” Viva said. She could never talk about herself out loud like that.

“There was nothing a bit brave about staying.” Rose took off her hat and shook out her hair. “What were my alternatives? To go back to Hampshire, divorced and expecting a baby? It would have broken their hearts, and besides, I’d been telling them in letters what a whale of a time we were having here. So much has gone wrong for my mother since the war, my brother dying and then Daddy being so ill, I feel she needs things to go well for me.” Rose closed her eyes in pain. “Jack didn’t mean to be cruel.”

“Does he talk about her?”

“No, well, yes, but only once when I insisted on it. He could think of nothing bad to say about her. I rather admired him for it. I only needed to look at his face to know he still loved her, maybe still does.”

Viva looked at her in astonishment. Rose was so fair.

“I felt horribly jealous, if it hadn’t been for Freddie, I can’t say what would have happened. The actual birth was awful—I’ll tell you and Tor about it later, not now. It happened at home by mistake and we were miles away from hospital. Jack came back that night, and when he saw me from the door with Fred in my arms, he broke down and cried. He got into bed and said he was sorry and that he would protect us until his last. It was such a funny old-fashioned thing to say but it meant so much, but by then,” Rose batted the apology away like a fly, “I didn’t need it. Everything had changed again. He got into bed and put his arms around me and Fred lay on top of us, and when I looked outside and saw, I don’t know, how huge the world was—the moon, stars—I knew I’d never felt more in my life. I can’t even properly put it into words. I also knew that if I’d left him, I would leave half of me behind.”

“Heavens.” Viva was bewildered, for Rose was actually glad, or so it seemed. She would have left him like a shot.

After lunch, Rose fell asleep on the rug with a biscuit in her hand. Her confession seemed to have exhausted her. Viva went to check on the horses, who were tethered and munching grass, and then she went back and lay beside Rose, thinking how self-engrossed she must have been in Ooty not to have spotted that Rose was in such distress. She often got this wrong, she decided, this idea that there were lucky people in the world, like Rose and Jack, blessed with good looks or money or parents, who somehow glided through life and didn’t have to go through the same things other people did. But it wasn’t true. Everyone seemed to suffer, just differently.

She was struck, too, by how Rose had told her own story simply and from the heart. How Rose had assumed Viva must
know about this catastrophe if they were to be properly close.
And the truth shall make you whole.
But could you only know another person to the extent that they were prepared to show their true selves to you? That thought gathered at the edge of Viva’s mind like a cloud.