East of the Sun (47 page)

“It doesn’t matter,” said Viva. “It’s my fault. It really is.”

The poor old thing looked so upset and Viva knew that if she didn’t keep a tight hold of herself she might start to cry again and that would be unbearable.

“You did try, you wrote. I should have come much earlier.”

“My memory’s bad,” mumbled the old woman, “but I do remember Felicity. A lovely woman. Can I tell you more about her when I’m not so tired?”

The little dog had started to dig behind one of the other cushions. It brought out a pink whalebone corset, various dusty kirby grips, and then a brassiere. Viva stuffed them back behind the cushion, glad that the old girl hadn’t seemed to notice.

“I’m afraid I’ve tired you,” Viva said. “I could always come back tomorrow.”

The old woman glanced at her and then at a watch that she wore pinned to her dress. “No,” she said. “Stay and have tea; Hari will be here in a moment. Where’s Hari gone?”

She began to cough, a painful rattling sound. Viva looked around her, at the sagging heaps of old newspapers and dusty gramophone records, the crusted ashtrays. At least the paraffin fumes weren’t so strong now.

“Sorry, darling.” Mrs. Waghorn stopped spluttering. She wiped her mouth with a large spotted handkerchief and gave her a charming smile. “And this is such a treat. Such a pretty girl on a dull afternoon. Tell me, are you very keen on money?” She stopped and gazed at her so intently she might have been counting the pores on her face. “Now I look at you,” she said at last, “you don’t look as much like Felicity as I thought you did, more like your father.”

Viva almost stopped breathing, but then the door opened, Hari appeared with a laden tea tray and Mrs. Waghorn lost her train of thought. “Scrummy!” she said. “Put it down there.” She pointed toward the camel stool.

“I’ve just been telling this young person,” she explained to him, “that I taught you at Wildhern. I couldn’t exist without him now,” she said to Viva. “He’s one of nature’s gentlemen.”

Hari put the palms of his hands together and bowed his head toward Mrs. Waghorn.

“She is my teacher,” he told Viva. “The teacher of my life.”

“Oh, what a lovely tea you’ve brought us.” Mrs. Waghorn was looking excitedly at the jam sandwiches, two slices of fruit cake and a large, tarnished silver pot of tea and two bone-china cups. “And well done you,” she said, “for remembering the cake knife.”

“Sorry about this.” She poured tea with a shaky hand and handed the rattling cup to Viva. The milk had separated into globules of fat. “I loathe buffalo milk,” she said. “One simply yearns for a decent cup. Now tell me something,” she said when Hari had left the room and they were alone again. “Where do you stand on the Indian question? But can I tell you something first.” She put down her own cup and again held up her index
finger for special emphasis. “You’ve met Hari now. You’ve seen what a fine person he is, good family and so forth. He was a very good student. One of our best ever, and the only proper employment he’s managed to get since he left school is as a driver or as a servant—you see, his family have no money.” Mrs. Waghorn’s eyes had filled with tears. “He assures me he does not mind, but I am deeply offended by that, are you?”

“Of course I am,” Viva replied. “It’s wrong.”

“Well, good. Agreed on that one thing then. You can stay for supper if you like. I tried to speak to a woman at the club about this ages ago. Frightful woman. They think I’ve gone jungli, and now they’ve started sending people round from the hospital.”

Mrs. Waghorn was starting to look agitated again.

“I’m nothing to do with them,” said Viva gently. “I promise you, and thank you for asking me to supper, but not tonight. I’m going to go back to my hotel to have a bath and an early night.”

Through the window above Mabel Waghorn’s head she could see the sky had turned into a purplish gray and sleet was turning into a flurry of snow.

On an impulse, she leaned over and briefly held the old lady’s hand. It was light, like a leaf, and smelled, faintly, of cigarette smoke.

“I would like to come back tomorrow morning if I could.”

The old lady looked at her.

“Don’t come too early,” she warned. “Hari and I read books in the morning.”

“I don’t want to interfere with your routines.” When Viva stood up and put on her coat, the keys jangled in her pocket. “But I don’t have long in Simla, and I’d very much like to see my parents’ trunk. That’s why I’m here.” She watched the old lady’s eyes cloud with confusion again.

“Oh my goodness, of course, of course. Heavens! Let me
think.” She put down her cup and put her finger to her temple in such an obvious thinker’s pose that Viva wondered if this forgetfulness wasn’t strategic after all. “I do hope I can find the bloody thing,” she said at last. “Have I told you about the dreadful red ants last year?”

As though red ants could eat an entire trunk, a whole decade of memories, her parents’ life.

“I’m spending the night at the Cecil.” Viva tried to keep her voice calm, rational. “Would eleven tomorrow morning suit?”

No answer. The old lady’s head had sunk into her chest, her eyelids had closed. When Viva looked up, Hari was standing at the door waiting to show her out.

“Y
ou can kill people but you can’t kill life,” Mrs. Waghorn announced at ten past eleven the following morning, shortly after Viva turned up. She and Hari had, she said, been reading the Mahabharata, which they did almost every morning.

“Do you know it?” she asked Viva. “It’s full of the most wonderful treasures. Not
the
key to life,” Mrs. Waghorn added, “but certainly one of them.”

It undoubtedly seemed to have cheered her up. On this gray winter morning, the old girl had put on a bright orange housedress and a fine set of amber beads. She’d even dabbed a little circle of rouge on her cheeks.

“I’m much more on the ball today,” she told Viva, as she stumped ahead of her into the sitting room where there was a sprig of fresh bougainvillea on the camel stool. “I talked far too much about myself yesterday. Today, I want to hear about you.”

Viva found the touch of the old lady’s hand on her arm both calming and upsetting, she was feeling fragile after an
exceptionally bad night’s sleep in which she’d dreamt about the houseboat in Srinagar. Talika, older and fatter, was sharing the cabin with her. The lake outside had had huge waves on it, so rough they both kept falling on the floor and Talika was furious. “Why is there never anywhere to put my clothes?” she’d shouted, her eyes and teeth flashing with rage. She’d thrown armfuls of saris and cholis on the floor and stamped muddy footprints over the delicate silks. Viva, full of a burning shame, had watched helplessly.

She’d tried to say she was sorry; Talika had touched her hair.

“It’s all right, Mabap,” she’d used that tender Indian word again. You are my mother and my father. She’d kissed her, something an Indian girl would never do to a European, except in dreams.

“I must have shocked you yesterday,” Viva told Mrs. Waghorn the next day. “This was all done on the spur of the moment.”

“
On the spur of the moment.
Isn’t that a marvelous expression? Is it Shakespeare?” The old girl cocked her head to one side like an attentive bird. “Do you really want to do this today?” Her eyes had gone very milky and round. “It is the most awful mess down there.”

“Do what?”

“Oh gosh, did I forget to tell you?” Mrs. Waghorn’s voice faltered. “We’ve found it. The trunk. Or at least Hari thinks it’s the one. It has your mother’s name on it.”

Viva felt her heart start to pound. “Are you sure it’s the right one? Have you opened it?”

“No. Of course we haven’t. It’s none of our business.”

“Where was it?”

“In the box room. I was so worried yesterday, and it did take Hari hours and hours—all the people in this house throw their
rubbish there. But he’s such a sweet boy he didn’t complain. It’s filthy, I’m afraid.”

“That’s all right,” Viva said. She didn’t know whether to feel sorry or glad.

“The box room floods in the monsoon. I haven’t been down there for years.” The old lady was breathing jerkily.

“Please,” said Viva. “I wouldn’t blame you, you’ve been very kind.”

The old girl sat down and shuffled her slippers; she had gone inside herself again.

“If you don’t mind,” she said after a silence, “I shan’t come down with you. Hari will take you and then you can stay for lunch if you want to. Hari’s mother has brought in a chicken biriyani, it’s very good.”

Viva’s stomach knotted at the thought of it. “I’d better see how long it takes,” she said. She heard the scratch of matches on a box, and saw Mrs. Waghorn’s eyes grow milky and distant again as she lit up one of her Craven A’s.

“Of course,” she said. “Good luck.”

As they stepped outside the house, she glanced up toward the sky where a flight of rooks were passing through a pearly sky. “I think it will be cold again today,” she said. She was shivering and she didn’t want him to know why.

Hari was explaining to her in his soft voice about the box room. It was awkward to get to, he said, stepping over a bicycle. They really should have one inside the house. He led her toward a broken path that went around the house.

“Only one or two of us have use of it,” he said, ushering her down a short flight of stairs, “to protect people’s things from the miscreant. Unfortunately though, a local chap has made a bit of shambles of it by putting hay and horse food there.”

She’d pictured a proper basement, somewhere secure,
but a few seconds later Hari stopped and pointed toward a ramshackle shed, with several tiles missing from its roof that seemed to be loosely attached to the veranda at the back of the house. A dog crept out of the empty spaces underneath the house, its dugs almost touching the ground. When it started to bark, Hari picked up a stone and hurled it in its direction.

“That dog is a tremendous bore,” he said, as both of them splashed through the sloppy red mud. “It belongs to the people next door. Sorry about this.” He looked down at her shoes and ankles, now rimmed with red clay.

The shed, though flimsy in appearance, had large black iron hinges, one of which was hanging off. Hari took a key from a chain that he wore around his waist and unlocked the door. The black gloom inside smelled like the bottom of a pond.

“One moment, please,” said Hari before he closed the door behind them. He put a match to an oil lamp he carried in his other hand. “It’s very dark in here, and there are plenty of furry friends.”

“What?” she said stupidly.

“Rats,” he said, “from the horse food.”

She sneezed several times. When he lifted his lamp she saw in its yellow blur several collapsed bales of straw, held together with rotten string. Weak shafts of light shone through a hole in the roof, and when her eyes had adjusted to the light she saw, on top of the hay, some broken ladders and what looked like a bundle of clothes.

“Follow me, please.” Hari’s lamp was moving past the hay bales and toward the back of the shed, where the ground felt slimy and unreliable underneath her feet. Now she saw some white shapes in the dark, furniture perhaps, and on top of them a jumble of old suitcases.

“Is all this theirs?” she said. “I was told it was one trunk.”

“Please.” He pointed behind the suitcases. “I have put.”

He waited for her to walk past a bundle of fishing rods,
and some ancient tennis rackets in their presses. It took awhile for her eyes to adjust again, but when she saw it, she heard herself gasp. The large battered trunk in front of her looked for that moment like a freshly dug-up coffin. It sat on a low deal table, covered in dirt and green mold. On top of it someone—probably Hari, to be kind, to give this moment some sense of ceremony—had laid a fresh marigold flower.

When Hari put his lamp down on top of it, she saw its wooden lid sweating and mossy, almost like a live thing.

Hari stood by her, polite, impassive. She took a deep breath.

“Well, here it is then,” she told him. “It won’t take me long to go through it.”

She could hear her breath whistling in her lungs. She hadn’t expected to feel like a grave robber.

She took the keys out of her pocket. Some twigs and what appeared to be bird droppings protruded from the lock and when she tried the key, it jammed immediately. She pushed again but felt it catch on the rust and grit.

“I’ll need your help, Hari,” she said. “The lock’s stuck.”

There was a faint silvery rustling in the darkness as he stepped forward.

“Rats are a damned nuisance,” he said to her pleasantly. “Please, memsahib, hold the light and I will have a go.”

He tried the key left and right and then again more forcibly.

“Step back, memsahib, please,” he said at last. He took a knife out of a leather sheaf attached to his pocket and inserted it under the lid. With one foot braced on the wall he leaned into the trunk. Both of them yelled as the lid flew open.

She looked down on the bundle of old clothes, she was trying to keep her thoughts cynical and lighthearted. So there it was, after all this time: the famous old family trunk. Her very own albatross.

“I’m quite sure there’s nothing here,” she told Hari breezily. “I’ll have a quick look through and then I’ll be off.”

She wanted him to leave now, but he stood quietly beside her. She heard her own jagged breath as her fingers reached out and touched something damp. A slimy sweater, then slacks, a torn pair of cricket trousers, a paisley eiderdown with a scattering of mouse droppings in the seams. She pushed her hand deeper; the smell of damp and camphor and then something worse—a dead rat?—was almost overwhelming. She touched something hard and cold. It was a saddle bag—her father’s, she guessed, although she didn’t recognize it—stiff with mold. Inside was a rusted hoof pick, a small ball of string, and a few tarnished coins. Underneath it was a Parcheesi board, sodden with damp and gnawed at the edges. When she picked it up it snapped uselessly in her hands.

Oh dear, oh dear. Too late! Too late!

Hari was starting to look worried.

“Could you leave me on my own for a while?” she said.

“Of course,” he said. He looked relieved. He must have known, or smelled, what this would look like. “I shall leave the light with you and lock the door, so you are safe. When should I come back?”

“Half an hour will be fine, thank you, Hari,” she said. She felt an urge to say something more: to thank him for his grace, his reticence, the gentle concern she saw in his eyes, but the door had shut behind him and she could already hear the soft slap of his shoes going upstairs again.

Alone in the dark, she fought against a choking feeling of panic. She’d taken so long she couldn’t funk it now, but the sour decaying smells, the pointless emptiness of their clothes running through her hands was horrible. Jodhpurs with the buttons missing, a stained pith helmet, what had been a pretty blue brocade jacket except for the large yellow damp stain on its collar, Josie’s nightdress, a stiff satin evening dress, a tin
with a powder puff in it, a bundle of letters, too damp to be legible.

“All for the jumble,” she said out loud in a bright voice that didn’t sound like her own.

Her fingers closed around something soft and pliable wrapped up like a mummy in a tea towel. A softness she recognized even before she’d unwound the cloth and seen Susie, Josie’s favorite doll. Josie had loved this scruffy thing with its tightly packed sausagey legs and gingham frock. Viva had been jealous of it: Josie had jabbered away at it constantly, smacking it and wheeling it around in its carriage, tucking it into bed at night under a tiny little mosquito net. It was a better younger sister than she was.

Josie had left Susie on the train once, the whole family waiting on a boiling platform while a servant went back to look for it. There had been a big row about it between her father and her mother.

Now there were ratlike bite marks on its arms; most of the kapok had been removed up to its knees. When she squeezed it, it fell apart in a foul puff of air.
Horrible.
She felt saliva come into her mouth. Susie was in Josie’s arms on the night she died; she remembered the screams coming from her bedroom, wave upon wave of them. The sounds of vomiting, shouts of “Do something, Mummy! Help me.” All night, feet running up and downstairs, as it dawned on everybody this wasn’t just another bout of gippy tummy. Viva’s own ayah had tried to stop her hearing by putting her hands over her ears, but Viva had fought free and crouched in the cupboard by Josie’s door. And some time after midnight, she’d heard the screams go weak, then tiny rabbitlike squeaks and then nothing.
For Christ’s sake, somebody do something!
Her mother’s shriek had torn through the dark like a wild animal, a raw and bloody sound. And then the door slammed shut.

Darling, darling Josie.
The doll collapsed underneath her
fingers leaving a trail of gray dust down her blouse.
My sister. My only sister.

She put the doll aside. There must be something here she wanted, could keep and make sense of. She dug down a little deeper, finding a few old letters, mostly bills, and a small household account book. Her eyes strained to read the pencil markings in her mother’s neat hand: Daggett and Ramsdell cold cream 2/6, shaving cream 3/6, two pairs of wool stockings 6/. In another tin with a picture of Queen Victoria on it was a pink bridge with two false teeth set in it. Her father’s. She crammed them into her pocket. The anaesthetic was wearing off; she was panting with distress. Her father’s teeth. Was that it?

A clump of large red fungi had grown through a hole in the bottom of the trunk. The last layer of clothes—a great coat, a satin evening dress, wet as leaf mold and completely useless. Hari would have to burn the lot.

This was it. An insult, a joke, a great big bloody waste of time. She closed the lid again, folded her arms and leaned her head on the top of the trunk while voices shouted lots of useless advice at her. Nothing had happened, that was what she was trying to tell herself.
Nothing had happened.
And even if it had, for she had just heard her own wounded cries, what on earth had she expected after all this time? Some great transfiguring moment? Parcels filled with damp but useable bank notes? Parental letters from beyond the grave full of stirring advice about how to live life from now on? So much energy squandered on a heap of rotten clothes—it was almost funny when you thought about it.