East of the Sun (49 page)

Her purple eyelids fell. “This is jolly tiring,” she said suddenly. “Can you come back later? We’ll talk about the ashes and other things.”

She looked worn out: an emptied paper bag, sitting there in the gloom, brandy glass in her hand.

Viva covered her with a rug; she took the glass from her. As she tiptoed around her, still light-headed with shock, she felt the strongest urge to kiss her on her forehead, but old habits die hard and she was almost dead with tiredness herself. She turned down the lamp and closed the door and told Hari that it was time for the memsahib to go to bed.

S
he went back to the hotel room and lay on the bed rigid with shock, and then when the shock wore off she wept uncontrollably. She’d been so angry with her mother for so long without ever thinking about her as a separate person with her own complicated life. She felt ashamed, revolted by her own stupidity. How could she have got it so wrong—dramatizing her father’s death, burying her mother under a heap of carefully nursed old grudges?

When she got up, exhausted and red-eyed, the day was over and there were stars outside her bedroom window, against a dark purple sky. It was nearly ten o’clock.

She went into the bathroom and turned on the taps. Her body felt stiff as if she had been pummeled, and on her hands she could still smell the damp and camphor plus the slightly meaty smell of decay from the trunk.

She stared at the dirt that was flowing from her; she had been buried alive. She scrubbed her neck, her legs, her breasts, her arms; she washed her hair and then she lay in the water until it got cold, thinking about her mother again.

She felt already that sometime soon she might be released from the darkness. An easing, something like space or lightness.

At least she knew now. Before, she’d blamed her, even hated her for so many things: for not keeping Daddy alive, for not wanting her, for not keeping her with her in India, when the truth was she’d been cut off from the two things that might have kept her going for a little while longer—her work and her child.

Viva got out of the water and reached for a towel. She saw her face blurry and indistinct in the steamy bathroom mirror. Maybe she’d been a ghost for years without really knowing it. That line of poetry lodged in her brain years ago at school, something about being “half in love with easeful death.”

Half in love with easeful death,
the other half floating out from herself, longing to slip away into the darkness like a boat in the water, to where Josie and her parents waited for her.

She climbed into bed, putting the little blue woman her mother had made on the bedside table. Before they’d parted, Mrs. Waghorn had pressed it into her hand.

“Keep it.” She’d closed Viva’s fingers around it. “It’s yours. I want it to be the first thing you see when you wake up tomorrow morning.”

She was calmer now and saw it more clearly: the careful arrangement of the woman’s shawl, the quizzical intelligence of her eyes as if she was in on some private joke. Its perfection hurt and thrilled her; how could something so small be so full of life?

She turned out the lamp and lay in the dark thinking about her last conversation with Mrs. Waghorn.

“My mother and I had the most terrible row the last time we were together,” Viva had confessed over tea. “I can’t for the life of me remember what it was about now, or why I was so
angry. I think I might have told her I hated her.
I can’t wait to go back to school.
I wanted to hurt her as she had hurt me. It was the last time I ever saw her.”

“You were ten years old. All children of that age are foul sometimes,” said Mrs. Waghorn. “Particularly when they’re about to be sent away. She understood.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.”

“Look, you don’t have to say things to make me feel better.”

“I’m not.”

The old girl had given her a penetrating look when she said that. Her hand had stolen over her mouth as if she was in the process of witnessing an accident.

“She was heartbroken.”

“No, don’t say it, you don’t have to.”

“I do. After she’d said good-bye to you she walked up to the school and had a drink with me. She was desperately upset; she knew she’d acted strangely with you, that she was losing her grip. I remember it so well because she said to me, ‘I couldn’t even kiss her good-bye,’ and she’d longed to—it was so horribly sad. Too much for everyone; but why should you take the blame for that?”

Mrs. Waghorn had become emotional herself at this point. She’d squeezed her hands together and swallowed several times. “You see, he taught
me
so much, too,” she’d rambled, “and he wanted her to work, but she had to hide so much and work so hard, and then when he died—Oh, this is silly,” she’d half choked. She’d tapped her thumb on the top of her left hand for a few seconds.

Viva sat there frozen and immobile as though parts of her had jammed, watching tears flow down the deep lines in Mrs. Waghorn’s face and drip into the collar of her dress. She had the sense of having trespassed into some private grief, of being
one part of a series of interlocking mysteries that wouldn’t all be solved.

When she had composed herself again, Mrs. W. had shuffled over to a locked cabinet and shown her several more pieces of her mother’s pottery. A celadon green teapot, a plate, a bowl. Beautiful things.

Viva had pored over them, desperate for clues.

“Why did she leave them with you?” she’d asked.

“They were precious to her, and she’d lost so much in transit; she wanted me to take care of them.”

There was a moment of farce when Mrs. W.’s wildly shaking hands had picked up a rattling cup and saucer. With a great effort, she held them up against the oscillating light. And then the urge to laugh had died in Viva. “Why the pots and not me?” she’d wanted to ask but the question sounded so nakedly self-pitying.

“I still don’t understand why she sent me home?” she asked instead. “Did I do something?”

“No, no, no, nothing like that.” Mrs. Waghorn had bowed her head. After a long silence she’d looked up. “Now, this is the point: it was my fault, I’m afraid. I said, ‘Send her back to England.’ I probably talked about the need for fresh air, the company of other children, not picking up a chi chi accent. All the things I used to say to anxious parents, and it was a ghastly mistake. And of course I did think at the time that she would eventually join you. I had no idea how desperate she was. I’m so sorry,” she said almost inaudibly.

Viva had looked across to the bowed head, the wispy white curls and the pink scalp showing through them. She’d made the usual gestures of forgiveness, squeezing Mrs. Waghorn’s hand, saying it wasn’t her fault, she was only following the rules and so on, but another part of her cried out in agony.

She thought back to the day after the row, when she and her mother had parted: the stiff hugs, the brittle jokes they’d made, her muffled howls of pain later, doubled up in the ladies’ lavatory in some railway station on her way back to school. They should never have let go. That was the truth, terrible and simple.

In the end they’d died to each other, not all at once, but bit by bit, by making themselves less vulnerable. A shocking, ridiculous, waste of love.

White muslin curtains, more stars, a silvery-green crescent moon hanging low in the sky. From downstairs she could hear puffs of music coming from a dance band, distant laughter. Her parents would have gone to parties here. “Your mother loved dancing,” Mrs. Waghorn said.

Now she pictured her laughing and glamorous in her green silk dress and snakeskin shoes, her dark hair flying around her face, and felt another shift inside her. She knew something now, and must never forget it. It was money in the bank.

However sad her mother’s ending had been, she had known deep pleasures: a husband she adored, work she was good at, children who had once been a blessing. Mrs. Waghorn’s laughter had rung out like a girl when she’d remembered the fun they’d had together. And when she’d talked of her mother’s work, she’d seemed to Viva to be years younger—ageless and invigorated still by her talent and the pots she had left behind. These things were real.

When she got up to close the curtains, a skein of cloud floated over the moon, making the heavens look marbled. A light wind blew the curtains inside the room, she wrestled with them for a while, and then closed the window.

A thought had come to her, clear and strong. She must tell Frank about everything that had happened that day. If she
didn’t tell him quickly, she’d find other ways of hiding it and the truth would be smudged or rearranged like footprints in the sand and they’d go on not telling the secrets that were at the heart of them. That was dangerous. It could even be fatal. “A weak specification,” as her father might have said.

She dressed hurriedly, tugging on her stockings, dashing a brush through her hair. What had to be done must be done now while the pain was real—if she left it too long she could lose her nerve.

She glanced at her watch. Ten-forty. The hotel’s front desk might be closed, the hall porter off duty. She ran out of her bedroom into the corridor and across the hall, almost throwing herself on the lift button. Her blood was racing as the brass doors closed behind her with a thunk.

The lift took a long time to wheeze its way down to the ground floor. When it stopped between floors she felt like screaming. When the doors were open she sprinted across an expanse of highly polished cedar floor toward the turbaned man on the desk.

“I want to send a telegram,” she told him, almost grabbing the pencil out of his hand. “To Lahore, tonight.”

He handed her a form.

“It’s over,” she wrote. “Stop. It’s done. Stop.” She felt her heart jump in her chest like a large fish. “Please come for Christmas.”

B
ecause Tor was atrociously bad at keeping secrets, she’d been forbidden by Rose and Toby to pick up Viva at the station. In the end, they’d relented—after all, the whole thing (as she had not hesitated to point out) had been her idea and it seemed mean to exclude her from the excitement.

“What happened?” she said, when she first saw Viva almost running down the platform. “You look different.”

“I feel different.” For once, Viva didn’t flinch when she put her arm through hers.

“So, tell all.” Tor ignored Rose’s quelling look. “Was the trunk stuffed with buried treasures? Did you see anyone you knew?”

Viva tried to smile, said something about being too ravenous to talk yet and, as they were walking across the car park, said casually, “Oh, by the way, did anyone leave a message for me?”

“No,” they both said together.

“I didn’t think they would,” Viva replied, and then, “I honestly can’t believe it’s Christmas in two days’ time,” as if that was what they’d been talking about all along.

“Sorry.” Tor didn’t like to see her look suddenly so tired and upset. She’d carried on walking doggedly down the platform but looked smaller, and more vulnerable.

Her hair was covered in dust and there was a hole in her stocking.

Tor glanced at Rose. “But we do have a small surprise for you. An early Christmas present you could say.”

“Honestly, Tor.” Rose shook her head. “I could cheerfully throttle you sometimes.”

“Why?” said Tor. “What did I say wrong?”

Nobody mentioned the surprise again until after Viva had had a bath and washed her hair and they were taking tea on the veranda. They were draining their cups, when Tor’s eyes went suspiciously round and innocent-looking and she said she thought they should stroll down to the stables and watch the horses being fed. She said it was one of her favorite things to do at this time of the day.

Viva, who was still looking pale and rather strained, said that sounded lovely as her legs were still rocking from the train and it would be good to be out in the fresh air. She hadn’t yet said a word about Simla, but they’d grown used to her being reserved about things like that by now and didn’t press her.

By the time they’d organized Freddie and his ayah and told Toby they were going out, it was dusk and the whole sky had turned into a gaudy fanfare of shocking pinks and oranges and peach-colored lights. As the girls walked arm in arm down the path together, their faces absorbed the light and they were laughing because Rose’s blond hair had gone pink.

At the end of the red dirt track, they turned to the right down an avenue of poplar trees that led to the polo ground.
Beyond them were the playing fields, the school, the darkening woods where a flock of parrots had just appeared, spinning in the sunset like miniature rainbows.

When they reached the wooden benches beside the polo ground, they sat for a moment watching a couple of men playing stick and ball. Their distant yelps, the rolling thunder of hooves, made Rose sigh suddenly quite heavily.

Viva said, “Do you miss Jack?” the kind of intimate question she usually went out of her way to avoid.

But Rose, who was looking almost absurdly young and pretty tonight in a white voile dress, didn’t seem to mind. She said yes, she did miss him terribly—and then she whispered, “Don’t tell Tor because she so wants this to be fun for us all, but I’ve been having awful dreams about him. I don’t know why.”

And then, because Tor was listening now, she said, in a wifely exasperated way, that Jack had only managed to telegram them yesterday to tell them that there was no chance that any of the regiment would make it home for Christmas. Something about a huge fall of snow north of Peshawar, near some mountain village, too secret for them to be allowed to know the name of. Jack would be stuck in some miserable hut in the middle of nowhere with only two of his friends from the regiment for company. Such was life, but it was a shame for him to miss Freddie’s first Christmas.

“We were petrified you’d be stuck in Simla, too,” Rose added. “It must have been lonely for you there.” She gave Viva a level look as if to say, “Come on.”

But Viva still couldn’t talk about it. She felt dazed and fragile, like someone who has broken their leg and must find a new way of walking.

She felt Rose’s fingers squeeze hers. “It’s all right,” she said gently. “You don’t have to say if you don’t want to.”

“I’m not trying to be mysterious,” Viva tried to smile, “I promise.”

“I know.”

At the end of the polo ground, they stood for a while watching in silence the birds floating and turning against the crimson sky. The men cantered side by side down the long side of the pitch.

Rose was smiling.

“Isn’t India the most magical place on earth sometimes?” she said as they walked into the stable yard.

“I mean, honestly, would you have missed it for anything, Viva? Even the bad bits. Do you feel that?”

“No. I mean, yes.” Viva had hardly heard a word. “I don’t know.” Her heart had started to thump uncomfortably. What was this surprise the girls had concocted?

They’d reached the stable yard. Everything was very neat here: freshly painted whitewashed walls, halters hung on brass hooks outside the stables, ropes coiled just so. Peaceful, too, with the horses munching their hay nets, and the gentle swish of the grooms sweeping the yard.

Two tiny Shetland ponies were stretching over their stable doors to look at them and whickering. Tor said that after winning their class at the Dublin Horse Show they’d been shipped out from Ireland for one of the maharajah’s sons, but the sons were more interested in their toy cars so they were hardly ever ridden. She thought they looked lonely.

“You are so soppy,” she heard Rose tease. “I mean, have they actually told you that?”

She heard Tor saying, “I just sense it.” And then, “I speak Equus, you know.”

The colors of the sunset had deepened again, and now a dozen or so pink horses looked curiously toward them over their stable doors; pink pigeons glided in dreamy circles above their heads. “What a night!” she heard Rose say from a great distance as they drew closer to the horses. “Let’s go riding tomorrow before breakfast.”

Tor’s eyes were glittering with excitement. “I’m glad I remembered to order it,” she was saying.

Rose laughed. She and Tor started to read out the names from the brass plaques each horse had above its stable: Jezri, Treasure, Ruth, Sanya. In the last stable, a beautiful, slightly mad-looking black Arabian stallion stood behind iron bars showing the whites of his eyes. He was stamping his feet on the concrete floor. He didn’t like this commotion any more than Viva did.

Tor was strolling nonchalantly up and down, murmuring at some of the horses, slipping others lumps of sugar.

Tor stopped. She turned to her.

“Now cometh the hour, Viva,” she said. “Look and listen.”

Viva heard a slight ringing in her ears and then nothing but munching horses, the soft swish of the grooms’ brooms.

“Cow-dust hour,” said Rose.

“It’s enough to send you to sleep.”

“But not yet, because”—Tor put her hands over Viva’s eyes—“here’s your surprise.” She pushed her toward the stable door. “
Look,
” she whispered softly into her ear. “He came after all.”

Viva’s heart leaped in her chest, there was a shrill sound in her ears, but when she saw it, she had only a second to adjust her expression.

It was a foal. Nothing but a foal, still wet from its birth, lying on a heap of bloodstained straw. Above it stood an exhausted-looking mare with a damp tail and sweaty sides.

And all the way here, lit up inside, excited by the sunset, she’d imagined—oh, it didn’t matter what she’d imagined—that he would be here after all, and that she’d be able to talk to him, and tell him about Simla and all the new things she’d learned there. The longing to discharge all this new information felt overwhelming. She felt he would listen, he would understand, that she’d be forgiven and then they would all have a jolly Christmas together.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.

There is life as it is and life as we are
and she was always confusing the two.

The foal was cream-colored with big, dark eyes and a ridiculous tail like a powder puff. She forced herself to smile at it, for the girls—how young they seemed—were grabbing her hands and jumping up and down with delight.

It got to its feet, tottered over to them to sniff their hands; they stroked its wrinkled little nose and said it felt like velvet.

“The mare lost her last foal, so she’s in heaven,” Tor whispered. “And she’s very well bred, too; Toby says the stallion’s bloodlines go back for centuries.”

Viva made herself concentrate. If she started to cry now she might never stop and her humiliation would be complete.

The foal’s pipe-cleaner legs collapsed. Its mother pushed it with her nose and made a gentle groaning sound. It hid behind her with a coquettish look and when it was suckling, the mare gave them a strange hot look, full of warning and pride. “
Mine,
” she seemed to be saying. “
Mine, mine mine.
Look, but come no closer.”

“It came last night,” Tor said, “and the most embarrassing thing is that we took Tourmaline, that’s the mare’s name, out riding earlier in the day. None of us twigged at all, nor did the grooms—she hardly showed at all. Then, late last night, when I came to give her an apple, I saw this huge balloon coming out of her bottom—well, not quite bottom but you know what I mean.”

“Was it frightening?” Viva felt punched. Her own legs felt almost as wobbly as the foal’s.
Stupid, stupid, stupid
. She must stop thinking like this.

“No, we weren’t frightened at all.” Tor was looking at her strangely.

“We were lucky to have a professional here.” And it was
then that Viva felt Rose’s nails dig into the palm of her hand. When she turned around, Frank was there.

And then, she’d done something so unlike herself that the girls had teased her about it for months afterward. “You,” she’d almost shouted. She’d put her arms around him and hugged him fiercely and burst into tears. It was just that the sight of him in that marvelous light was so overwhelming, so absolutely the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen, that she couldn’t stop herself.
Sometimes you know so quickly it frightens you. Your mind lumbers behind trying to make sense of it.

He was wearing his battered linen suit; he was smiling at her and shaking his head as if he couldn’t believe it either.

Thank you, God,
she thought when her head was buried in his chest.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
When he hugged her back, she cried some more.

And then everybody laughed because Tourmaline was stamping her front foot and shielding the foal with her body.

“I think we’re frightening the horses,” he said. When he smiled at her she thought her heart would burst.

And then she felt shy with him, conscious of the girls staring at them and the grooms, who’d stopped sweeping. Shy and a little tongue-tied.

“I got your telegram,” he said. She noticed his shirt hanging out of his trousers. There was a slight red mark on his chin where he’d cut himself shaving. He must have dressed in a hurry.

“I was going to go to Simla, but thought you might have left already. I decided to meet you here instead.”

“He drove like the clappers.” Tor had tears in her eyes, too.

“Do you promise you didn’t guess?” Rose was beaming. “I thought Miss Tor was about as subtle as a blow over the head.”

“I didn’t guess. No.” Viva could hardly speak, it was all too much.

Tor checked her watch. “I have an idea,” she said. “There’s two hours, at least, before dinner. Why don’t you two go for a walk…? You could actually go for quite a long walk if you wanted to,” she added innocently. “Supper will be late as usual.”

When they were alone again, they laughed, because they’d heard Tor boom “See, I
can
be tactful” to Rose as they’d walked off.

Then Frank touched her lightly on the arm.

“We’re going for a walk,” he told the two grooms who were leaning on their brooms and frankly gawping at them. “
Chee apbu lamkea?
” May we please borrow a lamp?

When the groom returned with a kerosene lamp, Frank turned to her and whispered, “There’s a summerhouse near the river…we could talk there. Is that what you want?”

“Yes,” she said.

She followed him back down the path toward the water. When they reached a small jetty where two rowboats were moored, the sun was throwing its last rays of light over the river. They stood for a moment looking at the bulrushes, at the melting colors, now burnishing a family of mallard ducks that were floating down the river murmuring to each other. In a few moments’ time, all this would be gone and night would fall.

“Are you cold?” he said, for she was shivering.

“Not cold,” she said. She closed her eyes for a moment. “I’m just glad…”

She thought she might say something reasonably neutral, something that would give her a moment to catch her breath.