East of the Sun (13 page)

“Oh, Tor, you are kind.”

“I’m not very kind actually,” said Tor, “but we’ll be in Bombay in a blink of an eye, so surely between us all we can keep him amused, then it’s his parents’ hard cheese.”

Rose appeared, pink from a game of deck quoits.

“What’s going on here?” she said. “A drinking den? Can anyone join?”

Tor sat her down and put her in the picture, ending up with “So I’m sure the poor child doesn’t need flinging in the brig or whatever they call it.”

“Don’t feel you have to say yes,” said Viva, noting Rose’s slight hesitation. “I would understand.”

“Well, I would like to talk to Frank first,” Rose said.

“Oh, of course.” Tor smiled. “We’ve all got to talk to Dr. Frank.”

“And aren’t you forgetting something, darling?” Rose looked at Tor.

“What?”

“Those noises you heard him making.”

“What noises?” said Viva.

“Do them,” said Rose to Tor.

Tor started to groan theatrically. “‘Oh my God! Ow! Oh God!’ I thought someone was killing him. I should have gone to help him.”

“It was probably best to leave him alone.”

“Why?” both of them said in unison.

“Well.” Viva looked at the carpet. “Those are the sounds boys make when they’re…well…you know…masturbating.”

“What?” Rose looked bewildered.

“Well, you know, they touch their thing and it makes them feel excited, happy.”

All three of them went pink.

“What?” Rose still looked confused. “What are you talking about?”

“Well, to put it another way, it’s how a man’s body goes when he is about to make love or a baby.”

“Oh my gosh.” Rose swallowed. “But he’s so young. Are you sure?”

“No, of course I’m not sure, but that might be what it was. I’m pretty sure he didn’t need your help.”

They looked at her, shocked and impressed.

“And is that all you’re going to say about it?” said Tor. “Come on, Viva, for once in your life
spill the beans.
You know so much more than we do.”

“Later maybe, not now.”

“Will you
promise
to come back later and tell us the rest? We haven’t had a
bishi
for days.” Tor’s face was on fire. “And I do think there comes a time when one has to know everything.”

Poor Rose still looked so bewildered that Viva made a reluctant decision.

“I’m not an expert,” she said. “I’ve only had one lover, I’ll tell you about him later.”

“The love bits as well as the story,” said Tor.

“Maybe,” Viva said distantly, although she never wanted to think of him again.

Indian Ocean, 500 miles from Bombay

A
lthough Rose had decided to avoid the boy next door as much as possible, she had started to feel a strange and unhappy kinship with him. Viva had told her that he hadn’t seen his parents for ten years, that his terror was growing as they drew closer to India. She said he now slept with his head muffled under thick blankets.

She understood. Yesterday when she’d used the term “fiancé” to describe Jack to one of the mems, the word had stuck in her mouth like a pair of badly fitting false teeth. And this morning when she’d woken up, she’d actually been sucking her thumb, something she hadn’t done for years. She’d picked up the photo of a uniformed Jack dressed up to the nines in his brass buttons and swords and wearing a strange proud smirk, almost willing her heart to swell with
something
at the sight of it, but what she’d really felt was an almost giddying sense of loss. In two days’ time they’d be there, her goose would be cooked and one door would close for her on her childhood and a sort of freedom, and another would open on a world as foreign to her as the moon.

This thought brought a gnats’ swarm of other fears into her brain. Would Jack even recognize her after their six months apart? And assuming he did recognize her, would he be disappointed? The setting for that first kiss at the Savile Club—the moonlight, the staircase, the gamboling cherubs above—could not have been much more perfect, but now was now, and so much depended on where you met a person and how you were feeling that day. When she stepped off the ship, every flaw highlighted by a merciless sun, would he look at her and think,
Huge mistake
? Or would she look at him and know in an instant
I got it wrong—he’s not the one
?

In the bathroom, she filled the basin with water and splashed her face angrily. It was odd, she thought, tying back her hair and putting two spots of cold cream on her cheeks, not to have told Tor how nervous she was feeling. It felt like an act of disloyalty, but whether to Jack or to her oldest friend she could not tell, that was how scrambled up her thoughts had already become. She dared not think about her parents—she’d cried herself to sleep several times on the voyage even thinking about how unhappy they would feel now that she’d really gone. She couldn’t bear to think of the most trivial things connected with Park House, like who would play chess with Daddy, and take him a cup of tea and a piece of lemon cake in the afternoon, or how would Copper feel now that she was no longer around to mince up apples and carrots for him. They’d feed him, but no one would know that special place underneath his chin where he liked to be scratched and she’d been too shy of seeming babyish to tell them.

She brushed her hair. Should she wash it today? Now that they were out in the middle of the Indian Ocean, everyone went on about how much fresher and more vital the air seemed; all of them dripped with sweat by lunchtime.

Even Tor, her thoughts resumed, had never been rash
enough to give her life away to a man she hardly knew, and anyway, she seemed to be palling up with Viva and helping the boy next door.

That morning for instance, Tor had taken off with her gramophone and a stack of 78s, and right now Rose could hear the muffled sounds of “Blue Skies” and three voices singing, “Nothin’ but blue skies from now on…”

The boy’s mood, according to Tor and Viva, was still very up and down, but Tor had discovered he had a passion for jazz and for cinema and during his good moments she nattered away to him like an old friend.

Last night, Tor had told her, she’d had a real heart to heart with him. Guy had even talked with remorse about stealing from the boys at school. He said he’d done it because they all came back with cakes and buns, which they shared around. He wanted treats to share around. He said when he went to stay with relatives during the holidays, they were cross with him for arriving empty-handed.

Rose had failed to be moved by the twisted logic of this story. In fact, thinking about the boy released the gnats again. Call her selfish, but she actually didn’t want to step off the boat with this slightly odd child as part of her set. He’d probably start smoking and scowling and swinging his hips, or wear that ghoul-like overcoat. What would Jack think of that?

She personally thought that they should have handed him over to Dr. Mackenzie right away, and had said so quite firmly when the matter had been discussed over drinks with Frank. But Tor, who had previously been so mean about him, had annoyed Rose by turning out to be the sympathetic one. She’d said they could all form a safety circle around him until he was handed over to his parents in a few days’ time.

They’d missed their chance anyway now: a consignment of
bad Indian Ocean oysters had laid three passengers low. There were no more beds available in the san.

Rose closed her eyes and put her head against the cabin wall. Another kind of music was coming from next door: Indian raga music, hesitant and foggy and infinitely sad. When it stopped, she heard Tor’s voice, blunt and jolly, followed by a burst of laughter.

Dear Tor,
she thought suddenly, with her beloved gramophone and her music and her hunger for life. It was so clear that she still had the most appalling crush on Frank. Those huge eyes hid nothing.

The thought that Tor was now keeping secrets from her, too, made Rose feel sad, but in a way she was relieved not to have to discuss him. Frank was great fun and very attractive but he wasn’t suitable. First of all, he was a doctor, and Mrs. Sowerby wouldn’t think him good enough for Tor. He was also, Rose suspected, quite bohemian in his approach to life, an unsettled sort of character. So many men were since the war, or so her mother had told her.

Last night at supper when she’d asked him about his plans, he’d said that he was determined to go up north and join his old university professor in some research in Lahore into some ghastly sounding illness, but that he also planned to travel. He said his life was “a work in progress,” which was all very well but…

Then he’d turned to Viva, who he was clearly more than a little in love with, and said, “What do you think I should do?” and she’d replied, almost coldly, “Why do you ask me?” and turned away. It was odd, when they seemed to be spending more and more time together, that she should treat him like that, but Viva was a dark horse, no question about that, and although it went against the grain, maybe Tor’s mother was
right when she’d advised her daughter to “always keep the men in your life a little hungry.” Poor Tor, who bounded around men like a hopeful puppy, seemed to get her heart broken over and over again.

She was cross with herself for having such dreary thoughts about love and its dangers. Mummy had warned her that most brides got cold feet before their weddings; maybe this was nothing more than that. What she needed to do was to start packing and stop thinking. She should stitch the hem of that skirt that needed mending, for a start.

A small cloth bag landed softly on the floor as she took her sewing case from the chest of drawers. Oh God! Here was something else she’d pushed firmly to the back of her mind: the birth-control sponge thingy that Dr. Llewellyn had given her. He’d told her she should soak it in vinegar and practice using it several times before her wedding night, but the thought of touching herself down there made her squirm.

Well, here was as good a moment as any. She took the bag into the bathroom and locked the door. She lifted her dress, took down her drawers and, for the first time in her life, poked around for what the doctor had called the birth canal.

There was a moment of panic—she didn’t have one, just this slippery corridor of wet skin—and then, ooh yes, she did, and it hurt trying to get the sponge into it. In fact, she thought, red-faced and panting, it was quite impossible, cramming all this into what felt like not enough space. When she parted her legs a little wider and bent down with an unladylike grunt, the little sponge flipped out of her hand and hit the mirror. And then she sat down and cried with shame and something close to rage.

Why hadn’t her mother, or someone, told her about this? All that advice raining down on her from friends and family
before she left—about dresses and cholera belts and shoes and snakebites and party invitations and who it was correct to call on—nothing, not a sausage, not a word about this.

She was washing the sponge under the tap when she heard Tor walk in with Viva. She pushed it back into its coy little gingham bag, hid it in her pocket, and walked casually back into the cabin.

“What’s the matter?” said Tor. “You look mis.”

“I’m fine.”

“No you’re not,” said Tor. “Don’t be silly. You’ve been crying.”

“Well…” Rose glanced at Viva. She was about to say something general and philosophical about the ship arriving soon and it being quite a big moment for all of them when she burst into tears.

“Do you want me to leave?” Viva asked.

“No, stay,” said Tor, although Rose would have rather she’d left. “All for one and one for all.”

Rose smiled politely. “I’m sorry about this,” she said to Viva. “I’m being such a fool.”

And then because there was the faintest chance that Viva would know about it, and it was really her last chance, she took the bag out of her pocket and showed them the sponge.

“It’s this birth-control thing.” Her face was twisted with the effort of trying not to cry. “Do you have any idea what I’m supposed to do with it?”

“What is it?” Tor picked it up. “What a dear little thing.”

“Oh shut up, Tor!” Rose snapped. “It’s not. It’s awful.” She snatched it back and held it toward Viva, swallowing hard.

Viva leaned over and looked at it. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I haven’t the foggiest. Hang on.”

She raced back to her cabin and returned with a thick book in a plain brown wrapping, titled
Ideal Marriage
.

“I found it in a bookshop near the British Museum,” she explained. “I hate being in the dark about anything so I bought it.”

All of them sat down on the bunk, Viva in the middle with the book.

“Do you want me to look up sponges, darling?” said Tor, who was looking contrite. She took the book from Viva’s hands. “It’s bound to be in there—budge up. Now, index, where are you?” She turned the pages. “Here we are: love as abstract concept; love as personal emotion; the language of the eyes; sexual efficiency of small women—what on
earth
could that mean? Bodily hygiene, mental hygiene, afterglow. There must be a sponge section if we look hard enough.”

“Don’t bother.” Rose’s eyes were focused on the pretty Persian rug between the bunks. “I’m sure I’ll work it out eventually.”

“Look, Rose,” said Tor sternly. “This is not the time to back out. What are you going to do in Poona when Viva’s not there? It’s awful feeling stupid,” Tor went on. “When I started my monthlies, nobody had told me a thing so I was sure I was bleeding to death. My mother was away in London, so I told my father, and he practically died of embarrassment; he walked in with some old rags and his regimental tie and never spoke of it again.”

Rose got up. She hated this kind of talk, but Tor wouldn’t let it go.

“Rose, sit down,” she said. “Viva, we’re going to have a glass of Drambuie and read this book.”

“But it’s morning, Tor,” chided Rose.

“I don’t care,” said Tor, “drink this.”

Rose took a sip of Drambuie and then another, grateful for the blurring effect of the liqueur.

“This book is hopeless,” Tor said after a while. “You promised to tell us, Viva, and you’re the oldest. Start with kissing
and work up. I mean, I’ve obviously kissed men, even Rose has, but how do men like it best?”

“I am honestly no expert.” Viva looked longingly toward the door.

“Viva! Speak!” Tor commanded.

“This is what I know about kissing,” said Viva at last, “but bear in mind I’ve only had one love affair, not thousands. The first thing to remember is that if you stand close enough to practically any man he will almost certainly want to try and kiss you. If he does, when a man angles his head toward you, it’s better to go the other way in order to avoid the nose bang.” Hoots of laughter here. “Also, although I didn’t exactly experience this, I understand that some kisses are a bit like music, sometimes passionate and probing, sometimes soft, and I think the general idea is to sort of let the man conduct them so you’re not kissing away like mad when he’s trying to do a butterfly kiss or something like that.”

“I did kiss Jack,” Rose dragged her eyes away from the rug, “but I’m sure I didn’t do any of that—it all sounds very scientific. But how lucky for you,” she added tactfully, “to have someone bother to teach you what to do.”

“Was I?” Viva looked down. “Maybe…” She fiddled with her drink for a while. “He was not really a teacher, or at least,” she added mysteriously, “not someone I wanted to learn from.” Viva was almost stammering. The memory of this man seemed to make her sad.

“Finish this.” Tor poured about quarter of an inch of liqueur in each of their glasses. “I have a big question to ask Viva, too.”

“Ask away,” said Viva, draining her glass, “but I am honestly not the font of all wisdom, simply the owner of the book.”

“Well, I’m going to ask anyway, because you
might
know.” Now Tor looked embarrassed. “I think I did a very stupid thing with Jitu Singh the other night.”