Oriental Hotel

by Janet Tanner

  Briefly she glanced at Brit, seated beside her, and saw her own awe of the place reflected in the set of his face. She knew now why he returned here again and again – it would draw her back too, she felt, if ever she returned to Bombay. The timelessness and overwhelming sense of peace could put the whole of life into perspective – even if it also awakened sleeping emotions and dormant desires.

  In Crawford Market, where the din of bleating goats, hawkers crying their wares, cotton-fluffers twanging their beatets and motor vehicles sounding their horns with gay abandon contrasted sharply with the peace of Elephanta Island, Elise bought an assortment of brightly painted wooden and terra-cotta toys for Alex and a pair of gilt sandals as a gift for Su Ming.

  ‘He’ll love them. Thank you for bringing me,’ she said to Brit.

  ‘That’s OK. I was due for a day out myself.’ He was steering her easily down the narrow alleys between the stalls where silversmiths and goldsmiths, copper-beaters and enamellers worked and sold their wares. ‘Why not have dinner with me tonight – unless you want to meet your friends, of course?’

  ‘No, that would be nice.’ She had been wondering how she could handle the evening if Lola asked her to dine with her own party again.

  They parted company in the lobby of the Taj and Elise went up to her room. After the draining heat outside it was cool and restful; in the sitting room, she relaxed in one of the green brocaded chairs before running a bath.

  This, she decided, was the part of the day she liked best – to lie in the perfumed water with the foam bubbles forming a cushion behind her shoulders and moving in a lazy froth along the line of her legs, feeling the moist heat of Cairo melting from her skin; knowing that tomorrow there would be another sachet of bubble bath to replace the one she had used, along with the newly laundered towels and the small bowl of fresh flowers. There was something comforting about the luxurious sense of continuity.

  Except that tomorrow she would not be here in Bombay. Tomorrow she would be on her way back to Hong Kong.

  She got up abruptly, letting her hair fall onto her damp neck, and reached for a robe. Then, as she emerged from the bathroom she was startled to realise that someone was knocking on her door. Too late for afternoon tea, too early for the room boy to turn the beds down … and she hadn’t yet rung for the maid to pack.

  Fastening the robe around her still damp figure she crossed to the door and opened it. As the safety chain caught it, a quarter open, the scent of flowers wafted in and when she released it she was faced with a turbanned room boy, half hidden by an enormous bouquet of long-stemmed roses.

  ‘Flowers – for me?’ she asked incredulously.

  ‘Please.’

  ‘But who …?’

  She caught back the words, but not the thought – outrageous yet strangely exciting – that ran in on the tide of surprise.

  Brit? Could it be Brit sending her flowers? Almost as soon as the thought crystallised, she dismissed it.

  Don’t be ridiculous!

  But her pulses were hammering again, just as they had done once before on that day and her voice was not quite steady as she addressed the boy.

  ‘Put them down on the chest and have someone sent up to arrange them for me.’

  ‘Certainly, madam.’

  He disappeared, silent as night on the carpeted corridor, and she drew out the deckle-edged card that nestled among the blooms.

  ‘For my darling wife. I miss you. Gordon.’

  For a brief, treacherous second she felt a dart of disappointment, then on its heels the other emotions rushed in. She was overwhelmed by his thoughtfulness, touched by the expression of his love – and puzzled and ashamed that for one insane moment she had thought, hoped even, that they might have come from someone else.

  As the shame hit her, suddenly she wanted to speak to Gordon more than anything in the world.

  He was the best and most reliable person she knew; the kindest, most considerate husband; if only she could hear his voice, everything would come right again and fall into its proper place. With almost desperate haste she reached for the telephone and tried to place a call, but as so often happened all the lines to Hong Kong were engaged.

  Tears sprang in her eyes and her sense of guilt increased – as if she personally was somehow to blame for the busy international lines.

  ‘Can I hold the call for you?’ the operator asked, and without stopping to think she agreed.

  ‘Yes, please.’

  As soon as she replaced the receiver she realised what she had done – it might be hours before the call came through and until it did she would be unable to leave her room, even for dinner. But perhaps that was not such a bad thing, either. In her present crazy state, dining with Brit was not the most sensible thing to do. It would be better to have something sent up and stay close to the telephone.

  When the maid arrived to arrange the flowers in a crystal bowl, she had a message ready. She asked her to present Mrs Sanderson’s apologies to Mr Brittain; then to explain that she had developed a sick headache and would prefer not to come down to dinner tonight, but to stay in her room and try to be fit in time for sailing tomorrow.

  Then, with the scent of the roses in her nostrils, she settled down to wait for the telephone to ring.

  Chapter Thirteen

  If the war had been sufficiently close to Cairo to lend an air of urgency to the Army and Navy activity and a bustle to the streets, it had hardly touched Bombay.

  Dockers working to load the Maid of Darjeeling did so in their own unhurried way, Indian troops waiting to board smiled their toothy-white smiles and chatted cheerfully, unconcerned as to what might lie ahead of them.

  Dear God, we shall never get away! Elise thought in seething frustration as she stood on the greenish tinted deck.

  The Maid was a much smaller ship than the Stranraer, older and less well maintained; although Elise had a cabin to herself, it was nothing but a tiny cramped cupboard where the door opened directly on to one narrow bunk and there was no storage space.

  As soon as she boarded a sailor had relieved her of her trunks – everything but the clothes she stood up in, a nightgown and a change of underwear – and though she argued and pleaded her protests had fallen on deaf ears.

  ‘You see now what I meant about the chest of your mother’s – what do you think would have happened to that?’ Brit asked; the satisfied amusement in his tone made her blood boil.

  ‘I can’t go eight days in one dress in this heat – it’s ridiculous! Everything turns into a rag in a few hours. I must be able to get at the rest of my things!’

  ‘Well, you can’t, and you might as well make up your mind to accept it.’

  ‘But surely if you spoke to them – explained – perhaps they’d put it somewhere where I can get at it …

  ‘I’m not doing anything of the sort. I told you when you undertook this voyage that it wouldn’t be any picnic, and I’m not going to try to get you preferential treatment now.’

  ‘I don’t want preferential treatment. I just want to be able to get at my clothes!’

  ‘Sorry.’ But he didn’t sound it.

  ‘Oh!’ She could have wept with frustration. ‘You’re just taking it out on me, aren’t you?’

  ‘Taking it out on you? For what?’

  The colour rose in her cheeks: that stupid temper of hers, goading her into saying things she immediately regretted.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘No, go on, I want to know. Why should I be taking it out on you?’

  ‘Because I let you down about dinner last night.’ God, how stupid it sounded! And the amused lift of his mouth told her he thought so too.

  ‘Oh, that! My apologies – I had quite forgotten. How is your headache? Better?’

  ‘Yes, thank you. But that wasn’t the only reason,’ she said, wanting to put him in his place. ‘ I had to wait for a call to my husband. He sent me flowers.’

  ‘Hmm.’ The amused eyes narrowed a fraction. ‘That was
a surprise for you. He sounds like a thoughtful chap.’

  But he managed to imbue the remark with something close to sarcasm, so that the words were not quite the compliment they might have been and her temperature rose another ten degrees.

  ‘Yes, he is. He’s kind and considerate – a real gentleman. He’d never expect me to go eight days without changing my dress!’

  Brit’s eyebrow lifted a fraction. ‘ Shall I give you a little tip, Elise? Try to keep cool; then you will find your dress will stay fresh longer!’

  And he turned and walked off, leaving her to fume impotently. Wretched man! Why on earth she had begun to find him attractive she could not imagine and all she hoped now was that he kept out of her way on this voyage. As he had so rudely said, that way her dress might stay fresh longer!

  But after steaming for four days along the coast of southwest India, through the Gulf of Mannar and into the Bay of Bengal, she was beginning to feel that any company, however provocative, would be better than none.

  She had stood at the rail watching without much interest as they slipped past towns and sandy, palm-fringed beaches with the Nilgiri and the Palni Hills rising behind them. She had thought of Joyce and the other Wrens as they passed close to the island of Ceylon, guessing that by now they would have arrived at the Naval Base at Trincomalee, and she had almost screamed with irritation as the troops drilled repeatedly on the decks immediately above her cabin.

  Moreover, boredom was not her only problem. As she had expected, four days had turned her crisp linen dress into a damp, creased rag which hung limply around her legs and reeked faintly but unmistakably of curry.

  The smell of curry was everywhere, of course. With Indian troops aboard it was the staple diet and relays of cooks worked through the night in the cramped little galley to provide them with chapattis. But it was the spicy odour on her own skin that she found revolting, oozing with the perspiration out of her pores.

  The fourth night, as they headed northwards across the Bay of Bengal, depression settled in on her; deeper and more wearying than at any timesince she had left Cairo and with it, a stifling sense of apprehension.

  Hong Kong had never seemed so far away, Gordon and Alex so far out of reach.

  ‘I’ll never get home, she thought, and what will happen to Alex then? Gordon will be all right, he’ll have the business, but Alex … he’s just a little boy. He needs me. I should never have left him – never. And this is my punishment …

  The misery was a yawning chasm inside her, sapping her energy yet keeping her from sleep. For hours it seemed she lay staring into the blackness, while the disquieting thoughts played chase-and-catch with one another and her nerves, tight as bow-strings, seemed to crawl beneath the surface of her skin.

  At last, more from exhaustion than anything else, she fell into an uneasy, nightmare-ridden sleep.

  And then, with startling suddenness, she was awake again.

  The voice crying out with shock which at first had seemed to be part of the dream, she realised was her own; realised too that she was in a sitting position, though she did not know how she had got there, and that her whole body was tingling and trembling.

  The cabin seemed to be vibrating around her, but in the pitch blackness she could see nothing. She reached for her torch and her fingers encountered emptiness. Stretching further and feeling about, she found only a hard, square rim – a frame. Of what?

  Outside the cabin she heard raised voices. Crawling free of the constricting bedclothes, she moved on hands and knees along the a bunk to the porthole, where with shaking fingers she tore at the blackout. Light flooded in, illuminating the chaos in the cabin. The hard edge her fingers had encountered was the frame of the one and only picture which had decorated the cabin walls but now lay shattered on the floor amidst the debris of her toilet things. Her handbag had fallen too and burst open; its contents were spilled across the floor: lipsticks, hair-combs, coins from her purse, nail file and tweezers.

  She stared for a moment, still bemused, not understanding, as the pandemonium outside the cabin increased. Then there was a pounding on her door.

  ‘What is it?’ She was close to tears, fear and bewilderment bringing the beginnings of hysteria. Along the bunk she wriggled again, fingers clumsy with nerves fumbling with the door lock. When she got it open there was no one there, just running feet, knocking and voices shouting further along the companion way. ‘What is it?’

  She hurled the door wide open, running out in panic, heedless of the fact that she was wearing nothing but her flimsy silk nightgown.

  ‘Someone tell me! What is it?’

  ‘Torpedo!’

  Who spoke the dreaded word she did not know. From one of the running, shouting men it came and hung in the air like the echo of thunder when the lightning has died away.

  Torpedo. Dear God!

  She froze, her hand clutching the doorpost, even her trembling stilled momentarily. Fear had taken on a new dimension now, so sharp and overwhelming that it seemed to have not only permeated every inch of her body but to be oozing clammily out of her pores.

  Through the general hubbub she could hear voices shouting instructions to get to the boat deck, but she seemed unable to move. Boat drills flickered through her mind like pictures in a magic lantern show. But unlike the drills this was real: the fear, the noise. Her own panic was reflected all around her, seen in other faces, frenzied movements, shouts. Like a puppet, her head twisted this way and that, her breath uneven with a small, sobbing sound.

  She took one faltering step forward into the path of a running man. His hands caught her arms, twisted her sideways into the cabin.

  ‘Hey, look out, lady!’

  Her head was spinning now. She had to do something, but what should she do first? All around was confusion and noise – and all while she was still shaken by the rudeness of her awakening.

  More voices, more running footsteps. And this time, incredibly, a face she knew. Relief flooded her as she ran towards him.

  ‘Brit!’

  For just a moment he held her and the contact steadied her. He was fully dressed and she caught at the lapels of his uniform jacket, holding on to them as if to a lifeline.

  ‘Is it true?’ Have we been torpedoed?’

  ‘We’ve been hit, yes. I don’t know yet how badly. Get some clothes on now and we’ll go up to the boat deck.’

  ‘Clothes?’ Even now she was not thinking clearly.

  ‘Yes, but be quick!’

  She turned to go back into her cabin, then swung round again catching at his jacket imploringly.

  ‘You won’t go without me, will you?’

  ‘Of course not. Hurry up!’

  In the cabin she tore off her nightgown, letting it fall where she stood and dressing with clumsy haste. As she was fastening her dress, Brit threw open the door.

  ‘Come on, for God’s sake!’

  ‘I’m coming …’ Leaving her dress half open she dropped to her knees, scooping up the contents of her handbag and pushing everything inside.

  ‘Never mind that!’

  ‘But my passport …’

  ‘Come on! Just get your life jacket.’

  She grabbed it and he took hold of her other arm, dragging her out of the cabin and along the companion way.

  On the boat deck the confusion was more ordered. Men gathered at the rail near the boats they had been allocated in drills, and from the shouted comments Brit pieced together what had happened.

  ‘It seems the torpedo caught the port side. The boiler room is flooding.’

  ‘Badly?’

  ‘I don’t know. Let’s get you into your lifejacket.’

  Obediently she slipped it on and he fastened it for her.

  ‘Should I inflate it?’ she asked.

  ‘No, not yet. Don’t you remember anything you’ve been taught at boat drills?’

  ‘Not much,’ she admitted and giggled nervously. ‘What about getting into the lifeboat?’

  ‘
There’s been no order to abandon ship.’ Brit’s level tone calmed her a little but she noticed that instead of looking at her his eyes were scanning the sea.

  ‘What are you looking for? A rescue ship?’

  ‘The U-boat that put a torpedo in us. Bloody nerve, coming right into the bay.’

  Another sharp thrill of fear. ‘You mean it might still be there? How would we know?’

  ‘We won’t, unless it puts up its periscope to have a look at us.’ His words were interrupted by the sharp crack of guns and he spun round.

  She caught at his arm, asked on a rising gasp, ‘What is it?’

  He half laughed. ‘ What I just said! They must have seen a periscope, or thought they did and fired a salvo at it.’

  ‘Did they get it? Where is it now?’

  He took her by the arms, holding her steady. ‘Calm down, Elise.’

  ‘But the U-boat! If it’s still there …’

  ‘You won’t do any good by getting in a state.’ She closed her eyes momentarily, catching her lips between her teeth and fighting to control the panic.

  ‘Elise?’

  She opened her eyes again. The hard lines of his face close to her gave her courage. She wouldn’t think of the U-boat beneath the water; the hole in the ship’s side and the flooded engine room. She wouldn’t think of the awful injuries suffered by the men they had taken aboard the Stranraer or of the dangers that would face her now if the Maid of Darjeeling sank. Take every moment as it comes and concentrate on living through it.

  ‘Are you OK now?’ Brit asked.

  She nodded, clamping her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering.

  ‘Listen, I have to leave you for a moment. There’s something I have to go back and fetch, but I wanted to make sure you were all right first. Now, promise me you’ll stay right here by the boat and if anything happens while I’m gone do exactly as you’ve been told. OK?’