Meet Me in Bombay

by Jenny Ashcroft

  * * *

  He insisted on mixing her some sleeping granules before he went to his own room. She didn’t drink them, but threw the vial down the sink. She bathed, though, got into her nightgown, and climbed into bed, pulling the sheet over her, the mosquito net down. She even closed her eyes.

  He didn’t come to kiss her good night. He certainly didn’t ask if he might. She wasn’t sure if he took an aid of his own, but before long she heard the low, steady breaths of deep sleep coming from his room. She waited, sheet clutched, until she felt certain he wasn’t about to wake and, blood pumping so rapidly she was afraid everyone in the villa must hear, she rose, discarded her nightdress and pulled on a loose gown, then, carrying her shoes, slipped quietly from her room, past Iris’s door—peeking in to make sure she, too, was fast asleep, little chest rising and falling, her comfort blanket beside her—and then down the stairs, out into the balmy warmth of the rustling front garden.

  She didn’t know where in the city she was going to go first. And she didn’t take the motor Guy had given her to drive; it would have felt very wrong to do that. Instead, she hastened from the driveway—the crunch of her footsteps the only sound besides the cicadas and night insects—onto the deserted road. She carried on down to the bottom of the hill, which was much busier, lighter, filled by locals still finishing their long days: eating and drinking outside their homes, hanging laundry, sweeping front steps in saris, feeding their tethered cows … She passed them all as she made for the tram stop and the line of waiting rickshaws, but it wasn’t until she asked one of the wallahs to take her to Peter’s house that she knew that was where she was going to go.

  But they weren’t at Peter’s house.

  Or at the Taj; not at the Sea Lounge’s waterside tables, or in the near-empty bar, the even emptier restaurant. Luke hadn’t checked into a room either.

  “You’re sure,” she said to the clerk at reception.

  “Quite, memsahib,” he said, swallowing a yawn.

  Frowning her thanks, she left. Outside the hotel’s grand front entrance, she ignored the gleaming saloon motors and carriages, asked the porter to hail her another rickshaw, and climbed into it. She wouldn’t worry, not yet. Not when she had plenty of other places to try.

  She went to Watson’s and scoured its bar and restaurants, too—caring not at all about the looks her hot, sweaty breathlessness was engendering from the staff and handful of late-night guests (let them look, she thought)—but he wasn’t there either. It was the same at the city’s various restaurants, all of which were closing, and the Yacht Club (oh, how it stung to go back there). By the time she’d finished searching the deserted nooks and crannies of the Gymkhana Club—the billiards room, the upstairs bar, the downstairs bar, even the palm-fringed playing fields—she could no longer keep her panic at bay. She stood at the lodge’s leafy entrance, clammy fists clenched, teeth gritted on her fear and frustration. Where was he? Where?

  She didn’t know. And she could only think of one more place to try. She walked this time, fast, heedless of the risk she was exposing herself to in being out alone so late, entirely preoccupied with telling herself not to hope, to expect anything. There’s no point. Why would he be there?

  He won’t be.

  He really won’t.

  She truly thought she believed her own assurances. She became convinced of it.

  And yet, when she arrived at Luke’s old rooms and found them as shuttered and abandoned as they’d ever been, it crushed her. She looked from the black windows to the padlocked door and didn’t even try not to cry. She’d been swallowing her tears for hours now, was exhausted from her hopeless chase, her ankle so sore, and the sobs broke from her. Gulping on them, she sank down, onto the steps he, too, had touched, head in hands, wishing for so much, and most of all that she’d just run straight to him when she’d seen him on the veranda, made him stay.

  “Where are you?” she said, again and again, into her palms. “Where have you gone now?”

  She wasn’t sure how long she stayed there. She was oblivious to time passing, the slow quietening of the surrounding streets as the hours edged into deep night. But eventually her sobs subsided, all her tears dried. They always did that in the end. She rose shakily to her feet, pressed her fingertips to the swollen skin of her cheekbones, and, limping a little on her smarting ankle, left.

  She wasn’t really conscious of the journey home. She supposed she must have found another rickshaw and paid the wallah to take her to Guy’s villa, because she arrived back at his gate. She thanked her driver, fumbled in her purse for rupees, paid him too much (she guessed, from his startled brow), and wearily climbed down onto the soft verge of the road as he bicycled away.

  She didn’t realize she wasn’t alone.

  She made to go through the gates and didn’t see him waiting behind her on the other side of the road, where the jungle dropped down to the sea.

  When he spoke—that voice which she hadn’t heard in too, too long, but which was deep, and warm, and his, his—it made her jump.

  “Hello, Miss Bright,” he said.

  She caught a sharp breath, spun on the spot.

  He stood, just as he’d stood on the terrace: hands in his pockets, stare fixed on her. He was all darkness and shadow, a silhouette beneath the leaves, but breathing, living; real.

  Real.

  Her sore eyes filled again, her tears not spent after all. “I wish I were her,” she managed to say.

  “Not Mrs. Devereaux?”

  “Her, too,” she choked.

  They were still a second longer. And then they both moved, fast, urgently. She sank into his hold, just as she’d ached to do every day and every night since he’d left her back in 1914. She gripped onto him, unable to absorb she was really doing it, harder, inhaling his warmth, his touch, his scent of soap, cigarettes … She felt his arms tighten around her, his spine beneath his shirt; his every single heartbeat. He held her tighter, so close, as though never to let her go. She never wanted him to let her go. She reached up, kissing him through her tears, feeling the wonder of him kissing her back, crying more because she realized now that in all these years of believing him alive, she really had given up on him coming back. But he had, he had, and she’d missed him so very, very much.

  “Where have you been?” he asked.

  “Where have you been?” she said.

  His cheeks moved; the hint of a smile. His smile that she loved. “You first,” he said.

  “I’ve been looking for you,” she said. “Peter was meant to telephone…”

  “I stopped him,” he said, his eyes swimming in hers. “I needed time. I went to the docks, leased my old rooms…”

  “I was just at them.”

  “I came here,” he said. “I’ve been staring at Guy’s windows, imagining you inside.”

  “Don’t,” she said, moving to kiss him again, “please don’t.”

  He pulled away, lips inches from hers. “I’m scared,” he said, “of what you’ve done. I need you, Maddy. I need us.”

  “I need us, too,” she said.

  “Peter told me…”

  “No,” she said, and this time she made him kiss her. “I don’t want to talk about Peter. I don’t want to talk.”

  She only wanted to feel his touch, his skin, his warmth—become convinced that he truly was alive again—and have that, only that.

  Softly, she pushed him, toward the jungle, invisibility. She felt his hesitation, his foreboding, I’m scared, and kissed him harder, afraid of his fear. “Please,” she said, “please,” and exhaled as she felt him give in, give himself over, any protest at an end.

  He picked her up, backing her against a tree, kissing her throat, her collarbone, needing to be convinced that she was real, too.

  “I’m here,” she said, “you’re here.”

  “We’re here,” he said.

  She arched her neck, closing her sore, swollen eyes, and forgot the black villa less than a hundred yards away. She
felt his hands on her waist, her thighs, and lost herself utterly in the thrill of his touch, his being.

  She didn’t think about Guy.

  She didn’t imagine him in his bed, asleep and oblivious, so trusting and good and gentle and kind.

  She held on to Luke, telling him how she loved him, hearing him say it back, and blanked her mind to how many times Guy had said the same, too. And his words, just a few short hours before: that she was his wife, Iris his child.

  I’m not going to give up on us.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  High Elms Residential Home, England, March 1976

  They were mowing the lawns, that morning. He saw the contract workers out there in the early-spring sunshine, pushing the cutters laboriously up and down the garden’s long banks, painting it with dark and light stripes. The scent of shorn grass wafted in through the open windows, filling the room with sweetness; the promise of summer to come.

  He’d been writing; he saw that from the notepad on the table before him. The page was half full; the regular slant of a hand he supposed must be his, except he couldn’t recall having picked a pen up. And yet, he was holding one. He turned his fingers, weathered with age, and stared at the thin, cylindrical object in his palm, forehead creasing. He looked down, at the words he’d written, and his frown deepened even more.

  That night in those trees was one of the happiest and saddest of my life. I almost forgot my dread, my awful jealousy. I believed you when you said that you’d always be with me. I truly trusted that I’d never lose you again.

  But I was wrong. You were wrong.

  Today is one of my clear days. I remember it all, you see. Every part of our story is with me, and I wish it could always be so, except if I could, I would forget our end.

  The part where you left me.

  I wish so much that you’d never done it, Maddy. There’s so much I wish I could have said. I need you to know that …

  He stared at the truncated sentence, unable to think what he’d been about to write next.

  Or who Maddy was.

  She was important. He knew that much from the words he’d written. He felt it, too. He closed his eyes, straining to think who she was, what she’d been to him, but no, nothing, nothing, came. He clenched his pen, nearly snapping it in his determination, his frustration, but it didn’t help. All he had was blackness where the past decades should have been. An awful void that stretched back and back to when he’d first been a patient as a young man in another hospital: a soldier in convalescent blues. He’d written in journals then. He recalled that. He could picture them on the shelf in his room, as vividly as if he’d left them yesterday. Had he been chasing memories then as well? He thought he had. He knew that he’d burned those journals in the end; he and Arnold had done it together, and raised glasses of whiskey to the fire.

  What had happened to Arnold?

  He didn’t know.

  And who, who was Maddy?

  Shaking, feeling a sickening disorientation that was at once familiar and entirely foreign, he threw his pen on top of the notepad, and pushed both away.

  “Another letter?” said one of the nurses—a young woman with freckles and a quiet voice—who peered over his shoulder and read his words, then smiled, but with a sadness that made it hardly a smile at all.

  “Who is Maddy?” he asked her, and was shocked at how firm his voice sounded when he felt so much the opposite of strong.

  She didn’t answer, but bit her lip, as though deciding whether to say.

  “Please,” he said.

  “She was your wife,” she said slowly, and he could tell she wasn’t sure she should be doing it.

  “Was?” he said.

  But she wouldn’t say more. She folded his letter and put it in her apron pocket, and refused even to let him know what had happened to the woman who’d apparently been his wife, or how long he’d been living in this place he found himself in.

  “You have to tell me,” he said, and to his shame, his voice began to shake.

  “You’ll panic again,” she said soothingly.

  “What do you mean, again?” he said.

  “Leave it now,” she said. “Emma will be here any minute.”

  “Emma?” he said, heart pummeling now. Who was Emma?

  “Yes,” said the nurse, “Emma Lytton. Your dear, dear friend. Just wait, she’ll explain everything.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Bombay, 1921

  Maddy didn’t go back to Guy’s villa that night. After she and Luke had collapsed against one another, breathless, his head pressed to her neck, her cheek to his hair, you’re here, they walked slowly, fingers entwined, down to the beach; those silent, white sands he’d taken her to on their very first day out, and where she’d grieved for him on every New Year’s.

  “I hate the thought of you doing that,” he said, pulling her closer.

  “Peter was with me,” she said.

  “I wish he hadn’t had to be,” he said.

  They both wished that.

  They sat beneath the palms until sunrise, never letting the other go. Maddy knew she shouldn’t stay—that Guy would be worried if he woke and found her not home—but she was in Luke’s arms, could feel his breaths going in, out, and nothing, not even the thought of Guy’s hurt, could compel her to leave.

  They talked, about so much. He asked her to tell him more about Iris. “Every single detail,” he said, “I want to know it. Don’t leave anything out.”

  “That’s going to take a while,” she said.

  “I have time,” he said. “What kind of baby was she? Did she sleep?”

  “Not for months,” said Maddy, and went on, pulling everything she could from her memory: first steps, first words, what had made her laugh, cry, favorite meals; all of it. He never lifted his eyes from her as she spoke; she watched the way they moved, hungry, impatient, insatiable for more.

  “I love her,” he said. “I’ve never met her, but I’ve always loved her. So much.”

  “She’ll love you. Just as much.”

  “She was afraid of me, earlier. She ran to Guy.” He tried to keep his voice level, but she heard the hurt there.

  She hated it; hated that it had all had to happen like that.

  “She’s six,” she told him, “and was upset anyway before you came. That party was horrendous.” She reached up, touching his face—the still unbelievable warmth in his skin—needing to make it better for him. “She’ll love you,” she repeated.

  “I’ve bought her a doctor’s kit,” he said. “My mother’s idea…”

  “Thank God for your mother,” said Maddy. “No more dolls.”

  She asked him how Nina and his father had been when they’d discovered he was alive, and he told her of how he’d surprised them at home; a Sunday three weeks before.

  “You do like your surprises,” she said.

  “I wanted to tell them myself,” he said, running his fingers up and down her arm. “It was so … surreal, being at the house. It was all exactly as I’d remembered it. The garden, the front door, the seagulls on the roof … Just the same.” He stared out at the black sea, remembering. “My mother, she was in the kitchen, just sitting in a chair and looking at this cupboard I was meant to have fixed.”

  “I know about that cupboard,” she said.

  He smiled. (That smile.) “She told you?”

  “She said you were drunk when you tried to mend it.”

  He laughed at that.

  She loved his laugh.

  “Anyway,” he said, “she didn’t hear me there. I said to her, ‘Why not let me fix that properly for you?’ My God, her face…” His smile spread, taking over his. “You should have seen her, Maddy.”

  “I wish I had,” she said.

  “Then my father came in,” he said, “and … well, it was … incredible.”

  “I expect they didn’t want you to leave,” she said, trying to imagine letting Iris go if she’d only just got her back like that.
/>   “They knew I had to,” he said, expression becoming serious once more. “I had to come, Maddy.”

  “Of course you had to come,” she said.

  There was no question about that.

  They talked of the war, of course, what had happened to him, to her, to so many others, not least Fraser Keaton—sweet, young Fraser—whom Luke had thrown his jacket over, and who had been buried all this time with Luke’s tags, his photo, so easily mistaken in the chaos of the battle.

  “I went to see his family,” Luke said, “just before I sailed. It was awful. Beyond awful.” He stared at her. “His parents were so … grateful, to finally know. I lied to them, told them it was quick.”

  “I’d have done just the same thing,” she said softly, eyes burning at their heartbreak.

  They spoke of Ernest, too, still at the King’s Fifth, waiting to be moved to his next home. The agony of how narrowly Peter had missed seeing Luke when he’d visited Ernest, three months before Luke had arrived at the hospital back in 1915.

  “I can’t think about it,” said Maddy. “I’ll go mad if I do.”

  “Peter thought he saw me, you know,” Luke said. “On the Menin Road, after I was injured.” His brow creased. “He told me yesterday.”

  It took Maddy a second to absorb what he’d said. As she did, and remembered all the times Peter had sworn there was no chance Luke could be alive, she felt her spine lengthen in confusion, disbelief. “He saw you?”

  “Thought,” Luke corrected her. “He assumed it was a hallucination, blood loss.” He exhaled a short sigh. “Maybe it was. Your husband helped convince him anyway.”

  “Guy knew?” said Maddy. “Guy?” She sat up straighter, confusion turning to anger. “He never said. Neither of them said.”

  “Peter hates himself for it.”

  She almost said, So he should, but stopped herself just in time. She recalled Peter’s grief when he’d returned to India, the agony ravaging his too-pale face as he’d spoken to her of Luke’s death. Don’t make me tell you what I saw.