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For Molly, Jonah, and Rafferty
PROLOGUE
A letter to somebody, from somebody else
Tonight, I cannot recall what year it is. Try as I might, I can’t think how long I’ve been here, in this residential home that’s really a hospital—this place of the old, the infirm, the forgotten … and the forgetful. I asked a nurse—a young woman with freckles and a quiet voice—to remind me, but she wouldn’t. She said I would panic again, that I mustn’t fret; time isn’t important. And yet, it feels so important to me. I am sure, you see, that I’ve been in this place too long. I have an awful sense I’ve been here for very many years.
I know that it was 1915 when I became a patient. I remember that much at least. And that I marked the date in the book I was given then: a leather-bound journal, handed to me during my first session with Dr. Arnold to take note of all the things my broken memory mightn’t keep hold of. Anything that comes to you, Arnold said, jot it down directly. His words have somehow stayed with me; for all I’ve forgotten, I can hear his voice even now, picture the open fire in his study, feel its warmth, quite as though I am still sitting before it, my skin prickling beneath my convalescent blues. View your past as a puzzle, he said, one you must slot together. Don’t let any piece slide away. I haven’t seen Arnold in a long time. I cannot recall when or why we parted. Perhaps he gave up on my puzzle.
Something I can never let myself do.
Today, after morning tea, I fell asleep quite suddenly. It happens like that. I never fight it. My dreams are all I have left of that other world: the one I’m sure I once belonged to. It was full of heat, light, and color; so much life. There was a party, on the banks of a sea. Nothing like the tame affairs we hold here—no finger sandwiches, diluted cordial, and crackers that don’t make bangs. It was loud, packed with people; the music of a ragtime band.
A figure, a woman in a silk dress, stood in the darkness with her back to me, gloved fingers touching a chair.
It was you. I am certain it was you.
The sky seemed to explode above. I watched you look up, the arch of your neck. I waited for you to turn, to see me. Something—a memory?—told me that you would.
Cheers filled the night, the opening chords of a song I cannot place, and still, I waited.
Slowly, you dipped your head. Your chin tilted, over your bare shoulder; the hint of your cheekbone coming round.
I held my breath. Even as I slept in my chair, I wasn’t breathing.
When I woke, as I always wake before you allow me a glimpse of your face, there were tears on my cheeks.
I have no recollection of what you look like, and yet I know that if I saw you, I’d recognize you instantly. I am certain you are beautiful. I want to think that we were happy together once. I try to believe our story was a wonderful one. But I am here, old and alone, and you are not, so I don’t know how that can have been.
To return to you is all I need, yet it feels more impossible with every passing day. Because however often I dream these dreams, however patiently I wait for my broken mind to conjure just one starting clue that might lead me back to you—an initial, the name of a place, just the smallest detail—it never does. I don’t know where you’re from, who you are to me, or if you’re even alive. I try so hard, every hour of every day, to remember, but sometimes I can’t even recall that I’m meant to be remembering your name.
And I still have no idea, after all these many, many years, of where I’ve been, what events took me from you, how I came to be in that hospital in 1915.
Or who on earth I am.
CHAPTER ONE
Bombay, 31 December 1913
It always seemed so strange to Maddy how, within the space of moments, life could go from being one thing to another thing entirely—with no hint, no warning sense of the change afoot. After that New Year’s Eve of 1913 especially, she’d often pause, bewildered by how oblivious she’d been in those hours leading up to midnight, caught up in the furor of the Royal Yacht Club’s party, never once suspecting what was just round the corner. But that night, as the clock edged toward 1914 and the ragtime band struck up a fresh set, filling the club’s hot, candlelit ballroom with Scott Joplin, and the vibrating dance floor with couples—a throng of sequined gowns and evening suits, racing across the boards in another sweaty quickstep—she thought of nothing but the heat, the music.
She had absolutely no idea of everything that was about to come her way.
She kept to the edge of the floor. Having danced the last five, she was happy to spectate for now, catch her breath and feel the cool relief of her iced gin and tonic pressed to her cheek. Rolling the glass on her baking skin, she let her eyes move over the opulence surrounding her. It was a lavish party, even by Bombay’s standards, and she, fresh from the soft, cozy world of her aunt and uncle’s in Oxfordshire, had to keep reminding herself that she wasn’t trespassing on a theater set, but actually now belonged in this steamy, foreign land. White-clothed tables fringed the dance floor, groaning beneath platters of curry puffs, naan, and tropical fruits. At the long wooden bar, tureens of punch jostled for space with buckets of champagne. Colored lanterns burned everywhere—on the tables, the walls—casting the paneled room in tinted light; their waxy scent mixed with perfume and hair pomade, the muggy heat that wafted in through the ajar veranda doors. There was no Christmas tree—apparently none could be got in India—but instead an arrangement of mango and banana tree branches had been decorated with baubles and balanced precariously by the ballroom’s grand entrance. It was rather an odd-looking construction, certainly like no fir Maddy had ever seen, and somehow succeeded in making it feel less rather than more like Christmas—much like the humidity-dampened paper hats Maddy’s father, Richard, had insisted they all wear on Christmas Day. It had felt so incongruous to be eating a turkey lunch out on the villa’s sunbaked veranda, peacocks sauntering by.
Richard was wearing another hat now. It was impossible not to laugh at the sight of him across the room—the head of the Bombay civil service, every inch the distinguished colonial servant in his pristine white tie—with a purple polka dot crown tipping jauntily on his graying hair. He was trying to coax Maddy’s mother, Alice, into a dance. Alice—who, unlike every other person in the room, still looked as cool as a Pimm’s cucumber, fair curls in place, not even a hint of sheen to her porcelain skin—held her gloved hands up, refusing. Maddy wondered if there was even the tiniest part of her that was tempted to do the opposite, say, “Yes. Yes, please. What the devil?” Maddy wished she would. It would be rather nice to see her let loose for once, take Richard’s arm and career into the fray with the same happy abandon as everyone else.
But Richard was already turning away, creases of resignation on his weathered face. Maddy felt a stab of pity for him, then again as he pushed his chin up and set off toward the bar. Why couldn’t Alice have just danced with him? Maddy, pulling at the damp neckline of her d
ress, didn’t even attempt to answer her own question. For all she’d been in India two months now, back living with her parents after more than a decade in England (she’d gone home for school, like almost all children of the Raj, but also to escape the tropical fevers she’d been so prone to as a child. “We couldn’t keep you well,” her father had told her sadly, many times. “It was terrifying…”), she often felt she understood her crisp, contained mother no better than she had that sweltering October day she’d docked in Bombay and met her again.
“Don’t look so serious,” came a voice from Maddy’s left, making her start, “not on New Year’s.”
Maddy turned, met the mock-scolding glare of her friend Della Wilson. The two of them had been on the voyage over from Tilbury together, in the same row of cabins as all the other single women on their way to families in India—in Della’s case, to stay with her older brother, Peter. They’d bonded over the ship’s irresistible high teas, their discomfort at the rest of the passengers’ assumption that they were all part of the “fishing fleet,” India-bound to find husbands. Which of course is exactly what my mother is hoping I’ll do, Della had said through a mouthful of chocolate éclair. It’s why she let me come. Not that I’m averse. She’d swallowed. I’d just much rather go tiger hunting instead.
“Where did you spring from?” Maddy asked her now. “I haven’t seen you all night.”
“I’ve only just got here,” Della said. “You can blame Peter for that, if he ever decides to come.”
“Where is he?”
“Heaven knows. He was meeting some friend earlier at the Taj Hotel, but was meant to be coming back to the house to fetch me. I imagine they both got lost by way of the Taj bar.” She fanned her flushed face. “I was worried I was going to miss midnight, so I hailed a rickshaw in the end. Don’t tell Peter. He keeps telling me off for getting them alone.”
Maddy, who’d oft heard Peter bemoan how much simpler his life had been before his irrepressible sister had descended on it, laughed and said, “Poor Peter.”
“Poor Peter nothing,” said Della. “God,” she blew air from her bottom lip, “it’s oven-like in here. Come outside? We can squeeze a quick smoke in before he gets here and tells me off for that, too.”
Maddy, deciding she could do with one—and without another raised eyebrow from her mother—nodded.
“So who’ve you been dancing with?” Della asked as, together, they picked their way through the heaving room.
“The usual suspects,” said Maddy, naming a couple of army captains, a perpetually sunburned naval officer, and a handful of civil servants who, like Peter, worked for her father in the Bombay offices.
“Not Guy Bowen?” said Della, in an overly innocent voice and with a nod to where he was standing, deep in conversation with some of the other surgeons from the military hospital.
Maddy rolled her eyes. “Would you stop it?” she said. “He’s my parents’ friend.”
“Your friend, too. He calls on you often enough.”
Maddy pushed the veranda door wide. “He could be my father.”
“Not really,” said Della. “He can’t be much over forty. You’re almost twenty-three.”
“I’m fairly sure,” said Maddy, “that he used to bounce me on his knee when I was a little girl.”
“Did he just?” said Della, in a way that made them both burst out laughing.
They carried on into the close, balmy night. As they went, out onto the seaside terrace, the band played on, and the clock in the pulsing ballroom behind them struck eleven: the very last hour of 1913.
* * *
It was quieter outside, the sultry air acting as a muffler on the music, the voices of all those milling around, lounging at the tables in the shadows. Flame torches crackled, lighting Maddy and Della’s way to the seawall. Not that they really needed it. This was hardly the first time they’d disappeared off for a cigarette together. They’d discovered the hidden spot on the sea stairs at a party not long after they’d arrived and had been using it to escape the watchful eyes of their relatives and the gossiping memsahibs ever since—much as they’d used to slip off to the P&O lifeboat decks on the voyage.
As they walked through the blackness, Maddy opened her clutch, searching out the cigarettes her parents’ bearer kept her supplied with. (“I am doing it for a small fee, yes?” he’d said hopefully, the first time she’d asked. “Yes,” she’d agreed, handing over the rupees, “yes. And for my sanity, too.”) She was still rummaging among her comb, matches, and powder compact when Della grabbed her hand and squealed, “Quick, Peter’s coming.”
Reflexively, Maddy turned to look in the direction of the grand Taj Hotel, dropping her matches in the process. She bent to fetch them, eyes on the approaching Peter. He was easy enough to spot, even on the dark promenade; it was his slight build, that ambling walk of his. He hadn’t seen them. He was talking to the other man with him, Maddy assumed the friend he’d collected from the Taj. She stared, taking in the stranger’s outline beneath the palms. He was taller than Peter—broader, too. She wondered briefly who he was, but didn’t give it much thought. She didn’t have time; Della beckoned her on.
Abandoning her matches, Maddy followed in Della’s hasty wake, gathering up her silk skirts to climb over the seawall, then down the damp stairs to perch beside a breathless Della on the usual step.
It was quieter yet nestled beneath the terrace. The water rippled against the stone wall, and local children splashed, playing—despite the late hour—in the Arabian Sea, in and out of the nearby fishing boats. A gentle breeze carried from the city, musty with pollen, dust, and drains, the heat of hundreds of thousands of people. Maddy felt it cloak her sticky bare back, her upper arms, and let her shoulders loosen, relishing the calm after the glittering intensity above. Placing a cigarette to her lips, she leaned over to let Della light it, and inhaled, closing her eyes at the rush of lightness to her head.
“I wonder what everyone’s doing back in gray old England,” said Della, in a tone that made it clear how much she enjoyed the thought that whatever it was, it was nothing like this.
“Do you really not miss it?” Maddy asked. “Not even a bit?”
“Not even a smidgen,” said Della. She looked at Maddy sideways, a tease in her round eyes. “You should try it; you’d be much more comfortable.”
“Easy for you to say,” said Maddy, because it was. Della had an open ticket to travel back whenever she wanted, family, friends that she knew she’d see again.
“You were so looking forward to coming,” Della reminded her, “on the boat.”
“I know,” said Maddy, “I do know.” But on the voyage, she’d thought her trip to India was just a holiday. She’d been excited. With college finished, it had all felt like such an adventure, one to relish before she took up the teaching post she’d been offered. And she’d been desperate to see her father again. Unlike her mother, he’d visited her every couple of years in Oxford, where she’d been staying with her aunt Edie—his sister. When Maddy was younger, she’d used to cross off the days until his next trip in her diary, drawing up elaborate itineraries for picnics, trips to the theater, all of that. A long spell staying with him had seemed such a treat. She’d even let herself hope for … something … with her mother: a relationship beyond stilted letters with foreign postmarks, perhaps. However, somewhere between her P&O liner leaving Port Said and arriving at the chaotic docks in Bombay, things had rather fallen apart for Aunt Edie and Uncle Fitz in Oxford, and Maddy no longer had a home left in England to go back to; no job either, thanks to Uncle Fitz, nor means to set herself up on her own. Just a mother who became ever less talkative whenever she raised the subject of whether she and Richard might see their way to helping her do it.
“It’ll get easier,” said Della.
Maddy exhaled smoke, making a haze of the stars. “Yes,” she said, “of course it will.” It wasn’t too hard to believe, not on a night like this, well away from her silent days with Alice
in the villa, and with music playing above, children laughing below. “Anyway,” she said, “I have it on good authority that it takes at least a year to feel settled in a place.”
“Whose?”
“My father’s.”
“Excellent,” said Della. “Peter would approve.”
Maddy smiled. Then, keen to move the conversation on, said, “How was your Christmas?”
“Ripping,” said Della, and went on to give an account of the trip she’d convinced Peter not to tell their parents she’d booked for herself—an organized tour of the waterways of Kerala; so many sunsets, visits to bankside villages, and freshly caught fish cooked over coals each night. It did all sound quite ripping.
“You lucky thing,” said Maddy. “Cocktails at the Gymkhana Club was about as adventurous as our Christmas got. Although,” she said, “Cook did curry the turkey for lunch.”
“How very daring,” said Della, laughing.
“Honestly,” said Maddy, tapping her cigarette, “I think it was mostly about disguising the taste of the meat.” No one had had any idea of how long the unfortunate bird had been waiting, plucked and ready, at the market. They’d all been poorly afterward. (“Par for the course,” Richard had said over dried crackers and tonic the next day. “I’m only ever one of Cook’s curries away from my ideal weight.” “Richard,” Alice had said, “really.”)
“Did you see much of Guy?” Della asked.
Maddy groaned. “Not this again.”
“Come on, tell me, do,” said Della.
“Della, he’s like my uncle.”
“A very attentive uncle.”
Maddy made no reply, hoping the look she shot Della would be enough to put her off.
Which of course it wasn’t. “I quite like the idea of an older man, you know,” Della said. “And Guy does it so well. Rather heavenly, if you ask me.”
Meet Me in Bombay Page 1