A few seconds later, Freddie appeared in Tor’s arms flushed from his bath and smelling of soap and talcum powder. “Say good night to Uncle Toby and Auntie Viva,” she said.
Viva kissed the baby’s forehead. His skin smelled like new grass. He waved his pink little fingers at her and struck her softly beside her eye where her scar was healing. She flinched, but kissed him again. “Good night, Freddie, darling,” she said. “Sleep well.”
After Tor left the room, Viva felt cross with herself for starting to feel low again. If she was going to be the ghost at the wedding, she should at least have had the decency to stay in Bombay.
“Have one of these.” Toby had returned with a plate of sturdy-looking mince pies. “Tor made them.”
She wanted him to stop being so nice to her now, to be left alone with her own dark thoughts.
“Um, delicious,” she said, scattering crumbs all over her lap. “You know, it’s awfully good of you to have us all.”
“The more the merrier as far as I’m concerned,” said Toby. “Shame, though, that your doctor friend couldn’t make it. Lahore’s really no distance at all from here, and I would have liked to talk to him about blackwater fever. It’s the most dreadful thing. We lost a couple of boys to it here last year.”
“What doctor friend?” She stared at him. “I didn’t know he’d been invited.” She put down her drink. “Who invited him?”
“Oh Lord,” he said. “I’ve put my foot in it?”
“No, no, no, not at all,” she said with a lightness she did not feel. “He was everybody’s friend on the ship. I hardly think of him but…” She looked at her watch. “I’m going to go to my room and freshen up—it’s nearly supper time. I enjoyed our chat, thank you for it.”
“Oh damn it!” Toby looked stricken. “I’ve blabbed, haven’t I? What an idiot.”
Upstairs, she locked herself inside her room, and sat doubled up at the foot of her bed. So this was the end of it: he’d been asked; he didn’t want to come. How much more clearly did she need to be told? And then she felt pain blooming inside her and there was nothing she could do about it. A winding kind of pain as if she’d been dealt a blow in the solar plexus. This is the end of it, she told herself again. He’d been asked, he’d said no.
Get this into your fat head, she raged at herself, and don’t you dare cast a cloud over Christmas because of it.
Five minutes later, she crept into the spare room across the landing where Rose and Tor stood in the glow of an oil lamp tucking the baby’s mosquito net around him.
“Tor,” she said in as natural a voice as possible. “Did you ask Frank to stay for Christmas?”
Tor’s face told her everything she needed to know.
“No, not really.” Tor turned for help to Rose, who was concentrating hard on the baby’s sheet and refused to meet her eye.
“Well, I suppose I might of, a little bit,” said Tor. “It was actually such a coincidence: we met up at a party in Lahore, it was such fun to see him, and I thought we all should, you know, meet up again.” She looked uncertainly toward Rose.
“Gosh,” said Rose, “I don’t believe you told me that.”
“And?” Viva tried to keep the wobble out of her voice. “What did he say when you asked him?”
“Well,” Tor couldn’t meet her eye, “it was such a shame. He’s working this Christmas, and had other plans.”
“Did he know I was coming?”
Tor fiddled with the mosquito net. “Yes.”
“It really doesn’t matter,” said Viva, who hated their sympathetic looks. “I hardly think of him now.”
“That’s good,” said Rose and Tor together, which meant that everybody in the room except Freddie was lying now.
Over supper, Toby, who said he was learning to carve and usually did it like an ax murderer, managed a decent job on a joint of roast beef. Jai came in and lit a flare path of oil lamps around the veranda, and then they opened a special bottle of wine Rose had brought with her and they toasted each other.
The talk was jolly and open, and Viva did her best to join in.
Over pudding—a very good treacle tart—they had a conversation about the difference between a friend and the kind of chap you’d choose to go into the jungle with.
“I’d never choose you for the jungle,” Tor teased Toby. “You’d be crawling around on your hands and knees looking for the greater spotted titmouse or the meadow waxcap or some such and we’d never get out. No, I’d take Viva with me.”
“Why me?” she wanted to know.
“You’re brave and you don’t go on about things. I mean, take this mysterious thing that happened to you in Bombay that you were going to tell us about later and never quite got round to. If I’d had stitches in my eye, or been knocked out, I’d dine out on it for months.”
“Oh, these.” Viva touched the side of her eye lightly. Trapped. “Well…it was nothing really; well, it was something but not as bad as it will sound.”
She had rehearsed this moment on the train on her way here, but even her lighthearted version of her kidnapping, starring her as terrified maiden in red dress, Azim as pantomime villain, drew gasps of horror from them.
“But you could easily have been killed!” said Tor.
“Why didn’t the police come?” said Rose.
“Well, they did. But you know how these things get swept under the carpet here,” she said.
“Not usually when they concern English people,” Toby said drily.
“Don’t forget,” she reminded him, “that the governor has warned us twice to think about closing the home, but no one can bring themselves to. It’s a complicated situation.
“By the way,” she was keen to turn the spotlight away from herself, “Mr. Azim went to a very pukka English boarding school near here, I think. He told me he was flogged there, that the games master broke his little finger, and that he never once celebrated Diwali there—it was called Guy Fawkes Night—can that possibly be true?”
“Yes,” said Toby simply. “It’s all horribly mixed up and we do walk a tightrope. Some of the upper-class Indians who leave their children here will not stand for their children being beaten by anyone but themselves; others seem to want a proper old-fashioned Western-style boarding school: fags, bad porridge, beatings, cricket, the lot.”
“But Guy Fawkes? Surely not.”
“Yes, they have it here. Even worse in some ways is how we cram Wordsworth and Shakespeare down their throats and ignore great Urdu poets like Mir Taqi Mir or Ghalib. It’s a great shame.”
The conversation ended when Tor put her finger to her lips and looked toward Freddie’s room. “Listen,” she said. The baby was crying, in a rickety sort of way that didn’t sound very serious. They all stopped and listened intently until they heard the click-clack of the baby’s cradle, which was being moved by a piece of string tied to the ayah’s foot, and then her crooning lullaby.
“What is she singing?” Viva asked Toby.
“‘Little master, little king, sleep, my darling, sleep,’” said Toby. “Nice to know women somewhere respect their damned men folk.” He gave them a brigadier’s glare.
Viva relaxed for a second as he filled up her glass with red wine. The story about the kidnapping had been successfully negotiated, and no one need ever know how much it had hurt her or how much of a fool it had made her feel, how it had taken away the kind of arrogance you need in order to feel you can make a difference in other people’s lives in a country so many miles away from anything you properly understand.
“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 pudding 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.
Chapter Fifty-one
The 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.”
“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.
East of the Sun Page 45
