Daisy had taken off her glasses. There was a long silence between them.
“I’m so sorry, Daisy,” Viva said at last. “You’ve worked so terribly hard here.”
Daisy’s eyes, naked without her glasses, looked old for a moment, and scared.
“I need the children as much as they need me,” she said quietly. “That’s the truth. But onwards.” The glasses went on again. “Let’s get back to the horns of this particular dilemma. Do you think that this Guy Glover person will strike again, or was this a silly prank?”
“I don’t know,” said Viva. “I wish I did, but I do know that I’d hate to be the one who closed this place down.”
At the sound of Guy’s name, a whole series of contradictory thoughts passed through Viva’s mind: yes, she was frightened of him, and yes, if he was genuinely mad she should feel sorry for him, but what she mostly felt was rage, pure and simple. How dare this feeble-minded little poseur wreak such havoc? So he’d had a miserable time at boarding school in England, so what? He’d never gone hungry as the children at the home had, or worked himself to the bone as Daisy did to get them fed and educated. And there were others things, too, much harder to admit. The fact was, he’d detonated a bomb inside her. She’d flung herself at Frank on that night in Ooty like a madwoman or a wild animal. After two days’ reflection, what must he think of her now?
She sat for a while. She could hear a saucepan being banged, and then, from the courtyard, children shouting nursery rhymes: “Mary, Mary quite contrary, how does your garden grow?”
“I don’t want to go to the police, Daisy,” she said. “There’s too much to lose.”
“Are you sure?” The nervous rash had spread up to Daisy’s chin. “I don’t want you to be in any danger.”
“Quite sure,” she said. “I think he’s made his showy gesture, and now he’ll go home.”
“Positive?”
“Positive.” Then they smiled at each other as if they’d understood that some lies were worth telling.
Eight days after this conversation, Viva moved into a new room on the first floor of the children’s home. It was bare as a nun’s cell when she arrived: an iron bed, a scuffed wardrobe, and a temporary desk—a wide plank placed on two packing cases—the sum total of its furniture. She liked it this way. It looked like a place for work, even for penance, and she was drawing in on herself again. When she got up from her desk and opened the battered shutters, she could see the feathery foliage of the tamarind tree. Daisy had told her that in northern India the shade of this tree was thought to be sacred to Krishna, the god who personified idealized love. That Krishna had sat underneath a tamarind tree when separated from his loved one, Radha, and experienced the fierce delight of her spirit entering him.
But Talika had told her a much bleaker tale. She said the tree was haunted. She’d shown her how the leaves folded in on themselves at night and that many ghosts lived there. Everybody knew that.
Each morning now, she heard the mournful sound of the conch shell blowing from the courtyard outside, the murmur of children’s voices from the dormitory above, and occasionally the muffled tinkle of a bell as some of them performed their morning pujas.
After her conversation with Daisy, both of them had agreed on a new timetable for her. Four hours’ teaching in the morning, followed by lunch, and in the afternoon she was to write the children’s stories. A harrowing task, she could see that already. The day before, she’d spent two hours with Prem, a little Gujarati girl with sad eyes, who told her of the earthquake in her home town of Surat. How her whole family had been wiped out, how she’d been rescued by a kind lady who told her to call her auntie, how this auntie had brought her by train to Bombay and then made her work as a prostitute—the phrase she’d used with an unhappy smile was “good-time girl”—and how she had been beaten and used by all kinds of men before she ran away and came here.
At the end of this tale, two hours in the telling, Viva had offered to change her name in her story.
“No,” the girl had said. “This is the first time I have ever told this story to anyone. Put down the name of Prem to it.”
Tomorrow, two sisters who had walked from Dhulia on their own were coming to talk to her. These girls had run away when they’d been promised as child brides to two old and brutal men in their village. When they’d refused, they’d been beaten savagely by their parents.
“We are only village girls but we are changing,” the elder of the two, a proud-looking girl with a fierce nose, had told Viva. “We don’t deserve to be given away like a cow or a mare.”
A few days later, Viva was sitting at her desk typing like a whirlwind, determined to write up Prem’s notes before supper, when there was a soft knock on the door.
“Lady has come to see you, madam.” A shy little orphan called Seema put her head round the door. “Name is Victoria.”
Tor burst into her room and flung her arms around her.
“Viva,” she said, “I need to talk to you immediately. I’m in such a state I think I’m going mad!”
“Good Lord!” Viva looked up from her work with some reluctance. “What on earth’s going on?”
Tor flung off her hat, sat down on a chair, and let out a burst of air. “Do you have a drink?” she said. “I don’t know where to begin.”
Viva got up and poured her a glass of water.
“Begin at the beginning,” she said.
“Well,” started Tor, “do you remember that awful lunch at the Mallinsons’ when Geoffrey told us they might be leaving? Well, I thought he was joking, but it turned out to be true. After you left, Ci finished the entire bottle of champagne herself and then drank some more, and she basically hasn’t stopped drinking ever since. It’s been awful, Viva. She’s been horrible to me for months really, but the other day we had the most appalling row.”
Tor drank half a glass of water quickly.
“What about?”
“Well, Ci had been to the club in the morning and she and Mrs. Percy Booth, one of her poisonous friends, had had a row about a coat that Ci said she’d lent her and wanted back—typical of Ci.
“Ci stormed out in the most tremendous huff, and when Mrs. P.B. phoned the following morning, Ci slammed the phone down on her. When it rang again, immediately, Pandit was told to take the message. After he’d taken it, Ci kept shouting at him, ‘What did she say? You’re to tell me exactly what she said. You won’t get into trouble.’ So then, poor Pandit thought for a bit, he went that sort of green color the natives go when they’re afraid, and said, ‘Mrs. Percy Booth says you’re a complete fool of a woman. Sorry, madam.’ Half an hour later, he was marched from the house between armed guards. He was crying. It was horribly unfair. I shouted at Ci, ‘How could you be so mean? You promised him he wouldn’t get into trouble.’ Then she looked at me—that awful sort of hooded falcon look she gets.
“‘Boring,’ she suddenly shouted. ‘Very, very boring,’ and then she said, ‘I gave him a week’s wages,’ as if somehow that excused everything.
“I almost hit her, Viva—I mean, I could feel it in my right arm. So then Ci slammed out of the room, hardly spoke to me for days, and had meals sent up on a tray to her room. Even Geoffrey couldn’t get her down; it’s been desperate.”
“But you’re leaving next week! How could she be so mean?” said Viva.
“No! But yes, that’s the point.” Tor was beaming. “Now comes the most unbelievable part. Do you remember that man Toby Williamson? He phoned while we were away to ask if I was all right. I could hardly remember a thing about him, except that he was rather eccentric and badly dressed—it turned out he was wearing his father’s dinner jacket on the night we met—so he actually looked as if he was having a baby—Viva, don’t laugh, this is serious.
“After a few days of being sent to Coventry by Ci, I was so desperate to get out that I phoned him at the Willoughby Club. I felt I had nothing to lose, and Mummy had sent me a list of materials and things she wanted me to
bring home and I knew I had to get her a present. But with Pandit gone and Ci upstairs, I needed a lift.
“He came straight over. His car was so scruffy—simply jammed with clothes and books—and Ci, who’d come down hoping someone fun had arrived, looked him over as if he was something the cat had sicked up.
“He was tongue-tied for a bit and I was almost sulking. You know what I’m like, Viva, so stupid really. I sort of compare myself to those people you read about in Tatler and so forth—idiots, really, in their wonderful clothes, their cars—and all this seemed so ordinary.
“He wanted to take me first to a place called Bangangla. It sounded jolly boring to me—something about burial grounds and a lake. I put my foot down and said I really had to go shopping. I explained about the materials and how I would have to buy Mummy a present and why it was important to suck up to her.
“Well, to nutshell it, he drove me to the Army and Navy Store. ‘Tell me what she’s like,’ he said when we were in the hat department. ‘I’m good at presents.’ ‘You won’t believe this,’ I told him, ‘but she’s tiny, like a bird.’
“And then he reached out and put one of those dreadful ostrich-feather pith helmets on his head and squawked like a bird, and we both looked at each other and had complete hysterics. It’s never happened to me with someone I don’t know, but it was bliss—if there was an aisle we would have rolled in it. Sheer nerves probably, or else I was just relieved to be with someone my own age and away from the Mallinsons.”
“So what happened then?” Viva was starting to enjoy this.
“We ended up buying her a teak elephant. Toby told me that the elephant’s head must always point toward the door for good luck—I think that’s what he said, either the head or the bottom. As soon as it was wrapped up, I knew she wouldn’t like it—she’s never liked any of my presents, they almost seem to make her angry. Anyway, all this is beside the point. After the shopping, he drove me to this place, Bangangla. It’s such a funny place, a sort of secret lake, right in the middle of Bombay, with steps all around it. It was so peaceful.
“We ate lunch at a little restaurant near there, and afterward we sat on the steps and talked and talked and talked, first about his work—he’s a biologist, or a bird man or something like that, but he’s working in a boys’ boarding school up north to make money—and then about absolutely everything: our childhoods, our parents, all the ordinary things I don’t like to talk to men like Frank and Ollie about because they’re so good-looking and I always have people like Ci or my mother drawling in the back of my mind, ‘Sharpen,’ when I get too sincere, or when I don’t think I’m good enough for them. Do you have a headache powder, Viva? Sorry, I know I’m talking too much but I will get to the point soon.”
The powder was dissolved in water. Tor lay down for a second with the damp flannel over her temples, and then she sat up.
“Here is the best bit,” she said. “All the time we were talking I noticed what a nice mouth he had and that if he had a decent haircut, he’d be almost handsome. And then he started to say some poetry to me and I said, ‘Look here! I must warn you, I’m very dim and I only know one poem and it’s called “Ithaka” and I think it’s codswallop.’”
Viva laughed. “What did he say?”
“He said, ‘Why?’ and I said, ‘Because it’s a lie. It’s all about finding diamonds and pearls on your travels and coming back a richer person, but if anything, being in India is going to make me feel much poorer, because if I hadn’t come, I wouldn’t know how wonderful life can be.’
“He didn’t say anything for a while; in fact we sat in silence. A small funeral party had come down to the lake and we watched this man strip down to his dhoti, wash himself, and scatter his father’s ashes on the surface of the lake. That was quite sad and Toby explained how the man was saying good-bye. That was interesting, and then I told him the whole story about Pandit and he was horrified, too.
“In the car going home he said that he didn’t agree with me about ‘Ithaka’ being just about the joys of setting out into the unknown, he thought it was about finding yourself, something like that anyway.
“Then he stopped the car near Chowpatty Beach. The sun was setting and he kissed me. Oh, Viva, have I finally gone mad?” Tor’s big blue eyes lit up.
“Go on! Go on!” Viva was the one on the edge of her seat now; Tor was in a trancelike state.
“He said, ‘I have a preposterous idea to put to you. You don’t want to go home and I want to get married, so let’s get married. It’ll be an adventure, and I already know you make me laugh.’”
“Oh no, no, no!” Viva put her hands over her ears. “This can’t be true.”
“It’s true.” Tor folded her hands in her lap and looked down at them.
“Tor, you went out with this man for one afternoon. You can’t do it, you simply can’t.”
“But it’s not like that.” Tor put the flannel back on her forehead. “That’s the funny thing. You know how sometimes you just know.”
“No, I don’t,” said Viva. “Not like this.”
“Toby says it’s more like an Indian marriage except that we’ve arranged it ourselves.”
“But it’s nothing like that, Tor,” Viva protested. “You know nothing about him or his parents and they know nothing about you.”
“I know that his mother lives in Hampstead with his father, who is an architect, and that she writes poetry and that she goes swimming in a pond in Hampstead Heath every morning with a kettle in her hand.”
“Oh well,” Viva said, “everything’s understood now.”
“It’s to make the water warmer,” Tor added helpfully.
“Wonderful.”
“Oh, Viva.” Tor clasped her hands together like a child. “Try to understand. I don’t have to go home to Middle Wallop this way. I shall have a house of my own. He said our life together would be a journey of exploration—like those Buddhist monks who go into the forest in order to find their ant-man or something like that.”
“Atman,” said Viva. “It means inner essence, and none of this sounds remotely monklike to me.”
“Oh, Viva,” Tor said suddenly. “This headache really is a corker. Do you have another powder?”
Viva dissolved some more Epsom salts in a glass of water.
“How old is he, Tor?” she asked more gently. She was surprised to feel herself almost panting with alarm.
“Twenty-seven and a half, and he earns one and a half thousand pounds a year teaching at a school for Indian boys in Amritsar. It’s called St. Bart’s or something. We’ll have our own house there.”
“I thought you said he was much older than you?”
“I’ve told you already, he was wearing his father’s dinner jacket. It made him look vast—he’s really quite slim.”
“And has he actually proposed to you yet?”
Tor looked secretive. “Well…”
“Come on, Tor, out with it.”
After a tremulous silence Tor said, “I am already bethrothed.” She rolled back the cuff of her dress and showed Viva a silver bracelet around her wrist. “He gave me this—in the Hindu religion it means ‘beloved.’”
“But you’re not a Hindu, Tor.”
“I know, and I couldn’t give a fig. We went to the Bombay Registry Office yesterday and I have this, too.” She showed Viva a gold band, which she’d hung on a chain inside her dress. “We’re eloping tonight. I shall leave a note for Ci Ci and I’ve already sent a telegram to my mother, and the best thing of all about this, Viva,” her eyes blazed with excitement, “is that it’s too late for anyone to do anything about it.”
Chapter Forty-two
When Tor had left with the same speed at which she’d arrived, Viva sat down on her bed, poleaxed by her news. The madcap speed with which Tor had donated herself to this Toby person was surely insanity, and the thought of her driving north in a few hours’ time in his ancient car made her shudder with terror. Her friend was in a paper cup headin
g for the rapids. The only thing she was grateful for was that Tor had been so bound up in her own news she hadn’t asked a thing about Frank.
Viva didn’t want to talk about him. It was over.
She’d sent a letter to Frank a week ago informing him that Guy was still alive, and it seemed that his “death” had been some sort of prank that had fooled them both, but as a result of it, she had had to move from Mr. Jamshed’s.
“It was kind of you to try to be our knight in shining armor,” she’d written, and then thinking this sounded sarcastic, she’d put, “to escort us home, but I think it would be better for us not to see each other again.” In her first draft she’d put, “at least for a very long time,” and then crossed that out, thinking a swift amputation was better than death by slow cuts.
“Mr. Jamshed and Daisy,” she’d continued, “have made it clear to me how important it is at the moment to do nothing that would harm the reputation of the home.” Her pen had wavered here—if they hadn’t slept together, perhaps she might have told him about the desecration of her room, and Mr. Jamshed’s painful accusations, but now he seemed part of that shame.
“I want to finish my book now, and when it is done, I shall go to Simla and pick up my parents’ trunk,” she’d said in her last but one sentence. “Good luck to you in your future endeavors. With kind regards, Viva.”
The last bit, about traveling to pick up the trunk, had been a bit of bravado, and maybe (she hadn’t thought of this at the time) a way of consoling herself because the letter, which had taken her over an hour to write, had left her body slick with sweat and her mind so disordered that, after the envelope had been sealed, she had taken down her notebooks, determined to work. When that seemed impossible, she’d walked around her room hugging herself and almost panting with distress.
East of the Sun Page 37