East of the Sun (48 page)

A pair of her mother’s snakeskin shoes had fallen beside the trunk. She picked one up, held it against her face. One of her father’s trains had lodged in its toe. A wooden train with the words “Himalayan Queen” painted carefully in his hand along its side. She crammed the train inside her pocket alongside his teeth.

“Viva? Miss Holloway.” She almost jumped out of her skin. “Are you there?” Mrs. Waghorn was standing at the door with a hurricane lamp in her hand, a wraithlike figure in the gloom. “Are you all right?”

Viva heard her sneeze as she shuffled along between the bales of old hay.

“Yes, thank you,” she said coldly. She hated being seen like this. They stood looking at each other.

“Please don’t cry.” She felt the old lady’s papery hand. “It’s my fault and I’ve found something I meant to show you before.”

She held something out toward Viva.

“I can’t see it,” Viva said sharply. “It’s too dark. That floor’s slippery, you know; you could hurt yourself.”

“We’ll have a look at it later then.” The voice that came back through the gloom had taken no offense. “Come upstairs and have a drink with me. I think you’ve done enough for one morning.”

“I don’t know how much to tell you,” Mrs. Waghorn said when they were back in her chaotic sitting room again. Mrs. W. had her back to the window; Viva was sitting on the chair opposite her. Hari had put glasses of brandy in their hands.

“How did my father die?” Viva said. “Tell me everything you know.”

Mrs. Waghorn looked surprised.

“Surely you know.”

“No. Not really. It’s all got so confused.”

“He died of overwork,” said Mrs. Waghorn simply. “He had been racing around the country working on the trains, and they found him one morning at the club in Quetta. He was dead.”

“Are you sure?” Viva felt she was speaking from the grave, too. “I was told he was set on by bandits, his throat was cut.”

“Who told you these things?” Mrs. Waghorn’s face sagged with disbelief. “It’s absolute tosh. He died putting on his shoes. It was very quick.”

“I don’t know who told me,” said Viva. “I was at school…I can’t remember now, somebody must have told me.”

“Not necessarily. Sometimes adults fudge even the simplest facts of life when they talk to children. They might have said he sat on a cloud with an angel or something. Or that God had moved his furniture and let him in.”

“Please,” Viva said quickly, “tell me everything. It’s all slipping away, and I can’t bear it anymore. I need to know what’s real and what I’ve made up.”

“Surely your English relatives told you something.” Mrs. Waghorn’s expression was still guarded.

“No, or at least I don’t remember. My parents were hardly ever there.”

There was a long silence.

“Now look here, I didn’t know them all that well,” Mrs. W. began cautiously. “But we did like each other.” She was tapping the pads of her fingers against her palm in an agitated way. “I’m not very good at talking about them either.”

“Please.” Viva took her jittery hand in hers and held it there. “Don’t be frightened. The worst thing for me is feeling so cut off.”

“Well.” Mrs. W. fiddled with her cigarettes and then lit one. “I’ve thought about this quite a lot; I’m talking about your mother now. Obviously, at first your mind goes round and round and you look for reasons.

“Here’s what I’ve come up with. Your mother was a good-looking woman; you’ve seen the photographs. She was great fun to be with, an asset to your father, but I always thought of her as a Saturday’s child, or she should have been. You know, the one who works hard for its living, but it was frightfully difficult with your father moving so much. And he of course,”
Mrs. W. swallowed hard and looked at her, “and of course he
was
a marvelous man. We all had a crush on him.”

Mrs. W.’s old gray eyes looked into Viva’s.
You loved him. You loved him, too.

“His work came first of course, that’s the way it usually is out here. But your mother had gifts of her own. She painted very well, and of course, as you probably know, did these wonderful things. Have you seen them?”

She leaned over and put a small, hard object into the palm of Viva’s hand. She took it to be a navy blue button at first: a toggle-shaped button of some elaborate design. Looking closer, she saw a woman, wrapped in a shroud or a shawl and carved out of a dark blue marblelike stone.

She looked at it suspiciously, wondering if the old girl was offering it up as some kind of consolation prize for the soggy clothes in the trunk. The tiny figure, no bigger than her thumb, seemed to radiate life. It felt important.

“I think I remember my mother doing pottery classes,” she said at last. The memory was so vague it was almost forgotten but it seemed important to keep Mrs. Waghorn talking in whatever way she could, so she turned the small figure over and over in her hand. “But never when we were around. But are you quite sure she did this? It’s like something you’d see in a museum.”

“When she gave it to me…” Mrs. W. had taken the figure back. She was stroking it affectionately. “She wouldn’t let me thank her for it. She said, ‘It’s a gift from the fire.’ You see, one day, I’d walked into her studio unannounced. Well, it wasn’t a real studio, a hut shall we say, in the grounds of our school. She was on her knees, in tears in front of her kiln. The heat was too high, and hours and hours of work had ended in what looked like a row of burned cakes. We had a cup of tea, and I said to her, I can’t remember my exact words, but the effect was, ‘This doesn’t look much fun, why bother?’

“And it was then she explained with more passion than I ever heard her express that sometimes when you opened the kiln there was something there that was so magical, a pot, a figure, so much more beautiful than the one you’d thought of that you tingled for hours afterward.

“Tingled!” Mrs. Waghorn laughed delightedly. “She told me potters call these offerings, these divine mistakes, the gift of the fire. A damn shame she stopped, wasn’t it?”

“I don’t know.” Viva had a hollow feeling inside her heart, a feeling that she’d been cheated of something she’d never had. “I didn’t really pay much attention to it. But why did she stop? Was it when Daddy died? When Josie died?”

“I can’t remember, I really can’t, but why does anyone stop? Husbands, children, moving too much. All I can tell you was that she left things of value, and that she worked very hard for them.”

Viva was still a little suspicious: Mrs. Waghorn seemed so much more fluent suddenly and this all seemed a bit pat, a concocted story, the sweet before the sour course and everything a bereaved daughter might want to hear.

“I don’t remember her like that at all,” she said, “but then I was a bit of a daddy’s girl. I only really remember her as, well, you know, somebody who did things for you: organized meals, name tapes, journeys.”

The sketching. Out of the blue she remembered it. How the pencil and the book had often appeared with the picnic things and how cross it had made her—it was time taken away from her.

“She was consumed with her work—the pottery, the paintings, the tiny sculptures—and felt guilty about it,” Mrs. W. went on, “so she tried to hide it. It was considered not the thing to do. Still is, but it was much worse then. For women that is, the men never stopped.

“So she was a misfit. I was, too, with my school, which
is probably why we got on so.” She chortled suddenly like a wicked girl. “She was tremendously good fun as well as everything else. A marvelous mimic. One of the very best things about her was that she didn’t take herself too seriously. But it was also her downfall, if you see what I mean.”

Viva was trying not to look too astonished; five minutes into the conversation and they were talking about a complete stranger.

She remembered her mother in two ways: rustling of taffeta or silk dress, waft of scent, the twinkle of earring brushing your face on her way out to some do at the club, or, in the mornings, permanently rushed, often tired and always in her father’s shadow.

“Am I going on too much?” Mrs. W. asked. “Tell me if you want me to stop.”

No, no, no, no.

“Please don’t stop.”

“Well.” The little dog jumped up onto the old lady’s knee. She stroked him and, it seemed to Viva, became a dotty old lady again for a few seconds, muttering and withdrawing and watching her from deeply pouched eyes.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you, dear,” Mrs. Waghorn said, focusing. “What is it exactly that
you
do?”

Viva could have screamed with impatience. In as few words as possible, she told her about the children’s home, and how she had for the past year been trying to write a book about it.

“What a
frightfully
good idea that sounds,” Mrs. Waghorn pounced. She seemed fully alert again. “I can’t think of anyone who
has
let Indian children speak first. It’s a very,
very
good idea. When can we read it?”

“I’ve stopped writing it.”

“
Stopped.
” The word was like a brisk slap. “Whatever for?”

“Oh, lots of reasons.”

“You mustn’t stop; it sounds such a good idea. I’d have gone potty if I’d stopped teaching when Arthur died.”

She didn’t have the energy to explain about the troubles at the school, or about Mr. Azim and Guy.

“It’s a long story,” she said. “Tell me about your school. Do you miss it?”

“Horribly,” said the old lady. “To find work you love is a treasure, isn’t it? But any chance you might start it again? The children would enjoy seeing their thoughts in print.”

“I might. Some of the notes got lost.”

“Well, you can always get them back surely?” The old lady was gazing at her steadily. “When you smile, you look so like her,” she said. “I expect everyone tells you that.”

“No, they don’t,” said Viva. “That’s the point. Nobody I know remembers them.”

“Ooof,” said Mrs. Waghorn, “awful.” She lit a cigarette and disappeared into smoke for a moment. “It will get worse as you get older,” she muttered. “You’ll live in the past more and you’ll mind.”

“I mind now: it’s always there and I’m always trying to forget it.”

“I had an experience with my own mother once,” said Mrs. Waghorn, “which I’ve never forgotten. When my father was based in Calcutta, we saw them once every two years. She came home and I supposed I’d grown, or had my hair cut or something, but I was standing at St. Pancras Station, by the ticket office with my suitcase waiting for her, and there she suddenly was, walking toward me. I was so excited I could hardly breathe. She walked down the platform toward me, she looked at me and then she walked straight past me. I could never quite forgive her, I’m not sure why. It was very unfair of me when you think of it, but I think something died in me that day.”

She patted her dog and then looked up. During the long
silence that followed, Viva felt a moment of suspension—the old girl was still sizing her up, waiting to slip her into some garment she wasn’t sure she wanted. And now it came.

“I’d like another glass of brandy,” said Mrs. W. “Help yourself, too. Now, are you the sort of person who likes the truth?”

“Yes,” said Viva, “I am.” She felt her heart skip.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“You see, I flunked it yesterday. I was so surprised to see you I didn’t know what to do.”

“I know.”

“Oh dear.” She felt Mrs. Waghorn’s hand close around hers. “Dear girl, please don’t cry. None of this is your fault.”

“It is.” Viva could no longer stop the tears running down her face. “I should have come earlier.”

“You are
not
to feel guilty.” Mrs. W. made this announcement with some force. “Do you hear? Guilt is a peasant’s pleasure and it was nothing you did. They wanted you away because nobody wanted you to know.”

“To know what?” Viva felt her whole body freeze.

Mrs. Waghorn started to mutter in some agitation to herself; she was talking herself into or out of something.

Viva poured more brandy.

“Tell me.” Viva dried her eyes, and made a huge effort to look in control. Mrs. Waghorn must not stop talking.

The old lady took a sip then put her glass down.

“Your mother took her own life,” she said. “I thought you knew.”

Viva heard herself groaning. “No,” she said. “No.”

“Yes.” Mrs. Waghorn’s eyes were bright with tears. “But I must tell you this: she was the last person on earth who I thought would ever do such a thing. Oh, she had her ups and downs, of course she did, but she was so full of beans and she loved you so much, but such a lot went wrong. This is no con
solation, but it happens to so many people out here. They get lost.”

“Oh God.” When Viva put her head in her hands she felt herself floating hazily above her own body.

“Are you sure?”

“Quite sure,” said Mrs. Waghorn. “I was the one who found her.”

“I’m going to stop talking soon,” Mrs. W. said a few seconds later. Her eyelids had turned blue and she seemed slightly drunk. “But it’s my belief that a good marriage needs a flower and a gardener to keep it…what’s the word?…what’s that word?…blooming. I could never have run my school unless Arthur had been on my side—been
practical
; it’s not enough to believe in other people. You’ve got to do the donkey work with them.”