East of the Sun (21 page)

“
Curtains.
” Tor was appalled. “Absolutely not. This is a what-the-hell day; you know the rules. Nothing but good times.”

“Bully.”

“Well, if you’re very good, by which I mean bad, you might be allowed to buy curtains on the way home.”

Tor made them sound like a disease.

Tor was just telling Rose that Frank had phoned last week when she had to brake hard to avoid a man with a cart full of oranges who was crossing the road. As the car stalled, the young man’s face suddenly appeared in the window on Tor’s side. His eyes were large and contemptuous, his purplish lips twisted. He was close enough to touch them.

“Leave India,” he said distinctly.

“What?” Rose was gaping at him.

“Leave India,” he said again. He looked at them as though they disgusted him.

“I don’t want to,” Rose said, and as they drove off the man stood in the middle of the road shaking his fist at them and shouting something they couldn’t hear.

When they were at a safe distance, they both laughed shakily.

“‘I don’t want to,’” hooted Tor. “That’s telling him. He won’t sleep a wink tonight.”

“I hate being looked at like that.” Rose had stopped laughing. She wound up her window. “Do you think things are hotting up here?”

“Oh, well, Geoffrey and Ci say it’s getting worse,” said Tor. “Trade thingamabobs, you know, sanctions, Gandhi stirring them all up, but they say most of the natives would be horrified if the British went home. What does Jack say?”

“Not very much about things like that.” Rose dragged her gaze back from the crowded streets. “In fact, nothing at all.”

Now they were in a room full of steam at Madame Fontaine’s salon, their necks stretched over basins. They could smell sandalwood and pine, and coffee brewing.

“Memsahib.” Savita, a fragrant presence in an oyster-colored sari, had just slipped into the room. “Shampoo with olive oil or with henna?” she whispered.

They decided on olive oil with rosewater and four young girls washed their two heads. Twenty fingers apiece massaging their heads and necks with sweet-smelling oils and then wrapping them like babies in warm towels.

“Vera could pick up a few tips here,” said Tor. Vera was the owner of a drafty hairdressing shop in Andover where they’d both had their plaits lopped off, and later their hair put up in elaborate whorls for the London season. Vera had hands like a navvy’s, she bashed your head on her taps as she rinsed.

“Memsahib,” one of the girls whispered at Tor’s elbow. “Refreshment.”

The coffee tray was garnished with fat hibiscus flowers.

While they sipped coffee, the girls came back. They were fascinated by Rose’s long blond hair, which they combed reverently.

“People here are such good cosseters.” Rose smiled at Tor’s reflection in the mirror. “They really seem to enjoy looking after one.”

“Are your servants like that?” Tor leaned forward, squinting at her eyebrows. “God, these caterpillars, I must pluck them.”

“Well, not yet. We’re muddling along at the moment,” said Rose sensibly. “But I’m sure I’ll get them sorted out in time.”

Tor gave Rose a look. There were times when Rose sounded quite tragically grown-up for a nineteen-year-old.

“Now, Rose,” said Tor a few seconds later. “To return to the big question of the day. They charge eight rupees here for the first-time shingling, and this is the place for it. But don’t let me talk you into it and stop saying it won’t suit you—you’d look good with a cowpat on your head.”

And they were giggling again, seven-year-old stuff really, but such a relief.

“You have wonderful bone structure, and it’s going to get
jolly hot soon. Just a thought,” Tor added innocently. “Your life, your hair.”

Rose looped her hair under and turned her head experimentally in the mirror. “We’ve already got water restrictions up at the cantonment.”

“Will Jack mind?”

Rose hesitated and thought about this.

“He’s never actually said he likes all this.” Rose lifted her hands under her hair and let it fall like spun silk to her shoulders. “So I honestly don’t know.”

Tor was glad to hear Rose sound even faintly rebellious about him. If it was possible to be too good-natured, Rose was, and it worried Tor sometimes.

The Bombay Yacht Club was full at one-fifteen when they arrived for lunch the next day. As Rose, shorn and a little shy, made her way with Tor across the room, the conversation dipped for a moment and one old man screwed his monocle in and opened his mouth into a gaping hole as he openly stared at her.

“Rose,” muttered Tor, “the hair is a success.”

Their waiter led them to a table in the corner of the room that overlooked the harbor. As he adjusted the shutter so they could better see the yachts below, a shaft of sunlight lit up their silver cutlery, the spotless glasses, and the finger bowls each with a slice of lemon in them.

“Very lovely menu for today.” The handsome Italian maître d’ flicked large linen napkins onto their laps. “Fresh lobster from the harbor, sole Véronique, guinea fowl, and pheasant à la mode. Champagne is on ice, madam,” he murmured near Tor’s ear.

“Tor,” Rose whispered in a sudden panic, “I don’t want to be a killjoy, but I can’t aff—”

Tor held her hand up. “Hush, child. The champagne was ordered by your husband, Captain Jack Chandler, probably groveling because he made you miss my party.”

“Jack!” Rose looked amazed. “Are you sure it was him?”

“Quite sure.” Their eyes locked for a moment.

The waiter poured the champagne; the bubbles made Rose’s nose wrinkle.

“Can you believe how sophisticated we are nowadays?” she said after drinking a glass. “How incredibly grown-up.”

“Rose.” Tor put down her glass. “I’ve only been here for three months. I don’t want to go home. I can’t—”

“Please don’t,” said Rose. “I can’t bear it either. I—”

“Let’s not talk about it yet,” said Tor quickly. “It’s too serious for champagne.”

“Quite right,” said Rose. “Anyway, I’m sure half Bombay is already madly in love with you.”

Tor opened her huge humorous eyes very wide and silently held up three fingers.

“Oh, Tor! You beast!” Rose clapped her hand over her mouth. She was the best person to tell your secrets to. “Anyone special?”

“Well, there’s a boy named Oliver, he’s a banker and we’re having quite a jolly time of it.”

“Tor, I believe you’re blushing. Is he husband material?”

“I don’t know.” Tor pulled her bread roll to bits. “Probably not—how can you tell? He’s good fun and very manly, but—”

“Tor, please, can I say one absolutely serious thing?” Rose said. “Don’t, whatever you do, rush into it. It’s such a huge change in your life, and Middle Wallop isn’t so very awful. And you’ve got to know at the very least that you can, or I mean, that you do love the person.”

They exchanged another quick look. And Tor got a stabbing feeling in her heart seeing how quickly Rose’s face had flushed with emotion. She wanted to ask, “Is everything all
right, Rose? Does he make you happy?” but you didn’t ask Rose things like that. She was a soldier’s daughter.

“Of course I am,” she would have said. “Everything is lovely.”

What else was she going to say now unless it was absolutely hell and he was beating her every night?

After two hours of talk, the waiter brought them coffee and sweetmeats. Tor leaned back in her chair and appraised the room in a genial way.

“Oh God!” She suddenly froze. “Am I going completely mad or can you see what I see?”

A group of around eight people, Indians and Europeans, were gathering up their things and preparing to leave, two tables down from where Tor and Rose were sitting.

“Oh no!” Tor’s grip tightened. “It’s him.”

Rose followed Tor’s gaze. “Who?”

But Guy Glover had already seen them. He had a camera over his shoulders and when he saw Tor he got up, did an affected double-take, and swaggered over to see them.

“Good Lord,” he drawled, “what a surprise.”

“What are you doing here, Guy?” Tor did not return his smile. “Viva said you were ill and had to leave rather suddenly.”

“I was ill.” Three people at his table, a Westernized-looking Indian and two very beautiful Indian girls, stood up. They were waiting for him to leave. “But I’m much better now.” He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “In fact,” he said, eyes darting, “I’ve got a job. I’m a photographer now.”

“A photographer?” Tor was amazed. “Who for?”

“For a film company here,” he said. “They’re bringing talkies to Bombay, and some English actresses and they need—
Look, this is awfully boring of me but I’ve got to go. Everyone is waiting for me outside.”

“So you’re better now.” Tor’s tone was unusually icy. “Viva will be relieved to know that.”

“Yes, much better, thank you.”

When he started to pat his pockets, first his top left then the right, Tor noted he still had dirty fingernails.

“Damn,” he said. “I’ve left all my cards at home. But if you see Viva tell her I haven’t forgotten her, she’s due a little windfall. And by the way,” he stepped back and gave Rose a prissy little smile, “
love
the hair. It makes you look like a beautiful boy.”

L
ove the hair.
When Guy left, Rose and Tor made each other laugh by imitating him, but now Rose felt less sure about her dashing new look.

Last night, as she’d stared at herself in the Mallinsons’ bathroom mirror and tried to see it through Jack’s eyes, she’d felt as if seeds of terror had been planted in her. Twisting and turning in the half-light she could see how fashionable she looked with it, but so different, too, like another kind of person, and here her nerve had failed and she’d felt angry at herself: it was only a stupid haircut for heaven’s sake, but she had no idea whether Jack would like it or not; there was still so much about him she couldn’t predict; in fact, when you got right down to it, whole slabs of him she didn’t know.

Recently, at the club, Maxo, Jack’s best friend, had told her—he’d been a little tight at the time—about some of the fun he and Jack had had together and she could almost hear him thinking,
Before you came.
Something about pinning a friend’s uniform to the door on the night before an inspection, also a mad guest night with the Fourteenth Hussars when
they’d all drunk the Emperor’s health out of Napoleon’s jerry. “They’d captured it at the Battle of Waterloo.” Maxo was almost speechless with laughter at the memory again, and Rose had smiled politely, but the story made her feel sad. It seemed to her that he was describing a completely different person, someone schoolboyish and a little wild, someone she might have enjoyed knowing.

As the train approached Poona Station the sun poured down on the tubs of Canna lilies and the sky above them was pure turquoise. She could see Jack standing in his riding clothes on the platform, his head moving rhythmically from side to side as he looked for her.
My husband,
she thought,
my spouse.
As if changing the word could jolt her into feeling something.

She thought about how in films when young brides met up again with their husbands, they wrestled impatiently with door handles; they gasped with happiness as they flew down the platform on wings of love. So why the knot in her stomach as she watched him get bigger and bigger? She didn’t want to feel frightened of him like this; she wanted to love him with all her heart.

The train was slowing to a squeaking halt. She stuck her head through the carriage window and mouthed, “Jack!” She showed him her hair. “Do you like it?”

His expression froze, then he shook his head.

Jack didn’t tell lies. She knew that already—he’d pointed it out to her as a matter of pride. But wasn’t it better sometimes to be kind rather than to be absolutely truthful, particularly about things that really didn’t matter?

The train screamed and stopped. Porters in bright red jackets came rushing toward them, but he waved them away. He pecked her cheek and put his hand into the small of her back and pushed her through the crowd.

“Well, I like it,” she said out loud, although he couldn’t hear her, “I really do.”

But walking toward the car, his hand guiding her like the spoke of a propeller, she felt the same kind of queasy apprehension she used to feel at the end of the summer holidays when Mr. Pludd drove her back to school.

She’d had such a wonderful time with Tor in Bombay—swimming and riding, good laughs and long easy talks—but as he drove her home she felt all her happiness draining away.

She tried talking for a bit: she said she’d bought him a shirt at the Army and Navy; he said that was good of her. He told her about some dinner party they’d have to go to next week, a polo match he’d be playing in on Friday, but his voice was so flat she knew he was livid.

When they were home again, she looked around her dusty new garden. Nobody had bothered to water the geraniums while she was away and their leaves were brown and wrinkled, but now was not a good time to bring that up. Dinesh, looking fierce and warriorlike, helped carry her suitcases in, and he seemed to greet her stiffly, too. She thought,
He resents me for being home again; he’d rather be with Jack on his own
.

Durgabai padded in and handed Rose a cup of tea. A horrible cup with the usual bright globules of fat swimming on it, but she felt absurdly grateful for it and could have kissed Durgabai when she pointed toward her new hair and said, “Nice, memsahib.”

Dinesh, sensing the storm approaching, glanced toward Jack to see what he thought of the hair, but Jack turned away quickly and said he’d like a wash before he went back to work. In the same constricted voice he said he had a meeting with the polo club committee after work. Rose didn’t believe him.

“Big baby,” she muttered to herself. “It’s not that bad.”

Shortly after that Jack walked out of the house. He slammed the door hard, and left without patting her arm or smiling or anything. When he was gone, she ran into the bathroom to
look at her hair again and saw how gaunt and pale her face looked in the mirror. She ran her hands through her bob. She liked the feeling of air on her neck, the freedom of it, but now when she looked at it again, she wasn’t entirely sure the new cut didn’t have just a touch of the Friar Tuck about it, which was how she and Tor always discussed other people’s bad bobs. But how mean of Jack to react like this. How utterly childish.

When she walked into the bedroom, a cluster of dead insects lay inside the glass light above the iron bed, one still buzzing in a halfhearted way. In the corner of the room lay a pile of their dirty clothes—his shirts, her jodhpurs—the dhobi had forgotten to collect them.

How futile she felt, flat as a pancake. She took the spotted cravat she’d bought for Jack in the gift shop at the Bombay Yacht Club from its wrappings. It lay in her hands, limp and foolish. He’d probably hate that, too, and tell her it was too expensive.

Aching from the train ride, she thought a bath might pass the time and calm her down. She walked into the garden to find the water man and saw Shukla sitting on the steps outside her mother’s hut, chopping onions. The girl leaped to her feet; she tried to close the door but Rose caught a glimpse of some cheap-looking statue garlanded with flowers. The smell of incense made her nose wrinkle.

Rose felt a surge of impatience. Where was the water man, and why did the simplest things here lead to exasperating complexities? At home when you wanted a bath you turned on a tap; here Durgabai, who didn’t like Dinesh, would have to ask him to find Ashish, the wash man, who lived in a squalid hut on the edge of their compound and who daily emptied their commode and fetched their bathwater. The water would then have to be heated in the two-gallon oil cans that stood in a row outside the bungalow and hauled inside. Poor Ashish,
no wonder he was skinny as a ten-year-old boy. He was an untouchable, Jack had explained, the lowest of the low in the Indian caste system.

While she waited, Rose sat on a chair in her bedroom leafing without enthusiasm through the recipes at the back of
The Complete Indian Housekeeper.
Marmalade pudding, sago and tapioca jelly; that sounded a bit school-dinnery.

Jack had recently begun to hint that after the round of dinner parties welcoming Rose to Poona, they’d soon be expected to ask people back. This seemed reasonable, but because cooking was so new to her, her mouth went dry at the thought of giving a whole dinner party by herself. She’d heard already how ruthlessly catty the women at the club could be to those who failed.
My dear, tough as old boots. A horrid sauce, why have three cheeses in this heat?

She’d been trying to remember the kind of puddings Mrs. Pludd had cooked: apple crumbles, blancmanges—simple stuff—but the authors of
The Complete Indian Housekeeper,
authorities on everything from tapeworms in children to lizard traps, made it all sound so hard. First they said she must decide what kind of sweet: those made with farinaceous substances or cream, those stiffened with gelatine or clear jellies, or cakes and puddings. The chocolate blancmange came with a stern warning: “Indian cooks never boil this enough. They use too much flour and leave it with a raw taste.” Rose, who didn’t have a particularly sweet tooth anyway, sighed.

“Memsahib.” Ashish knocked on her door. “Water is here.”

Watching his skinny shoulders straining across the floor, she felt weary of it all: this man with his shifty look; the servants outside whispering and waiting; Jack and his bad mood, the ladies at the Poona Club, most of whom would know by lunchtime tomorrow that she’d had her hair cut.

When the big tin bath had been filled, she got down on her
hands and knees to check there were no scorpions or snakes hiding in the plug or underneath it.

“It’s fine,” she told Ashish. “Thank you.”

And exactly one hour after she had first thought about it, she took off her dress and stepped into the bath.

She cried for a while, silently so the servants wouldn’t hear, and when she opened her eyes again she told herself she was behaving like a brat—sniveling in the bath and feeling so wretched. No wonder Jack could hardly be bothered to talk to her. She picked up her watch and rubbed steam from its face. Four o’clock. Four hours between now and Jack coming home for supper. Firming her jaw under her bath hat, she told herself to buck up now and behave like someone of nineteen, not nine. After she’d washed, she’d do what Mummy so often advised and pretend nothing nasty had happened: she’d put on a pretty dress, a little scent. She’d cook Jack his favorite supper, which was steak and kidney pudding and should, surely, be easy enough to cook.

Fired with enthusiasm, she sent Dinesh out to Yusuf Mehtab’s, the best butcher in Poona. Dinesh’s austere expression had softened when she’d explained that this dish was Jack’s favorite; he’d even laughed when she’d mooed elaborately and made her fingers into little horns and said with the aid of her phrase book, “I would like rump steak, please.”

Next, she took down a selection of pitted Bakelite dishes from the cupboard. She unscrewed the flour jar, slightly damp and clogged but surely serviceable, and remembered she’d forgotten to ask Dinesh to buy the two tablespoons of fat, Mrs. Pludd had said, for the suet crust. Well, ghee would have to do.

Shukla went out to see if there were any vegetables they could use; the spring greens she returned with looked a little
yellow about the stalks, but they’d have to do, too—the vegetable wallah only came twice a week.

Flowers. Rose, followed by Durgabai and Shukla, went into the garden, where the only flowers in bloom apart from the parched geraniums were bougainvillea. Durgabai held the basket, Shukla the scissors.

“It’s all right,” Rose said. “I can do this on my own.” She snipped away at a few dusty stems.

“Please, memsahib.” Durgabai’s glorious eyes had pleaded as she took the basket with the two flowers in it. Durgabai’s husband was an invalid. He shrank back inside his hut whenever he saw Rose. The entire family, Jack said, lived in terror of losing the job and the shed that went with it. Rose understood, she sympathized, but she still wanted to cut her own flowers with her own scissors. It was one of the few jobs around here she was allowed to do.

When Dinesh brought the steak home, she could have cried. She’d smelled it coming through the door, and when he set it down on the table in the kitchen, she saw the muscles in his arms bulge as he tried to cut it. Also, she’d indicated kidneys by pointing under her ribs, but Dinesh had brought a string of evil-looking sausages instead.

“Thank you, Dinesh.” She’d pocketed the change. She’d been told, by more than one mem at the club, to punish lapses like this by fines, but she must have asked for the wrong cut and Dinesh had tried his hardest and, who knows, she might have said sausages by mistake or he’d thought she meant intestines. She’d confused him as she seemed to do a million times a day.

Before she started cooking, she tried to recall Jack’s routine at work, so the pie would get into the oven on time. Usually, he worked until three in the afternoon and then went to the polo
ground to practice with the Third Cavalry’s A-team, or the Crackpots as they called themselves. Rose, a good rider herself, liked to go and watch him if she could.

It cheered her to see him thundering up and down the field on Bula Bula or Topaz or Simba, his favorite mounts: the way he tuned himself to them, listening to their breathing, anticipating their turns—for his horses were so well trained they spun round with the merest movement of his head. More than once, watching him on the polo field, laughing and dirty as a boy, she’d thought,
This is Jack at his happiest,
and wished that she could make him look like that.

After polo practices, they often went to the club, where she was already on first-name terms with half a dozen or so junior wives, and was occasionally nodded at by Mrs. Atkinson, the colonel’s wife, who she found glacial and condescending.

Before Jack had taken her there, he’d told her cautionary tales about junior mems who drank too much or who got too familiar with senior officers’ wives. He’d pretended to joke but she’d known he was serious. He’d encouraged her to drink weak whiskeys drowned in soda as a chota peg, which made her feel frightfully adult.

“It’s not considered common here,” he’d assured her, “it’s almost medicinal.” He warned her about gossip. “The same old stuff goes round and round because they don’t have enough to do,” he’d said, meaning the wives.

Well, that was certainly true—last week she’d heard twice about a Major Peabody’s wife who had got tight on the dance floor and danced very suggestively with a junior officer, and about the inedible meal someone else had cooked at a dinner party, which had given everybody a gippy tummy for days afterward.