Meet Me in Bombay

by Jenny Ashcroft

  “You’re not hungry?” her father asked, eyeing her untouched bowl of soup.

  “Not really,” she said, then, knowing how easily he worried (all that typhus as a child), “it’s so hot tonight.”

  “Do you normally find the heat affects your appetite?” Della asked.

  Maddy met her smirk. “I do, Della, yes.”

  Peter snorted into his bowl.

  “Should you stay home?” Richard asked, persisting.

  “I’m fine,” Maddy assured him, “really.”

  “Or we could come with you?” he offered. “I’m not so tired—”

  “No.” She practically shouted it.

  His eyebrows shot up.

  Della grinned.

  Lowering her voice, Maddy said, “There’s no need, honestly.”

  “You’re sure?” This from her mother.

  “Absolutely,” she said.

  “Have some gin,” suggested Della.

  “I’d rather she ate her soup,” said Alice.

  Maddy did try, but it was an inevitably poor effort, swiftly abandoned, as were each of the subsequent four courses Cook had laid on in honor of the sahib’s return. She suspected her failure to eat any of them would be the nail in the coffin so far as she and Cook were concerned, but there was nothing to be done.

  Della at least helped with dessert. “Pass it over,” she said, reaching across the candles, “I think I can squeeze it in.”

  “Ever the lady,” said Peter.

  At last, the meal was over, and there was just a nightcap to be got through before the three of them were on their way. More anxious than ever about the time, Maddy knocked hers back with a swiftness that made her mother look twice, and Della nod approvingly (“Bracing,” she said, “excellent”), and then they were off, climbing into the waiting motor, driving through the city’s dark streets, Maddy fretting the entire way about whether he’d have waited, trying to get her strumming heart under control, failing utterly, but then they were there, and she was standing at the club’s garden entranceway, staring toward the lamps burning in the foyer, the long lower terrace where she’d sat so many times for tea with a carelessness that now felt unimaginable. She placed her hand to her liquid stomach, tight lungs full of the musty air, her gown rippling in the breeze. From above, in the bar of the upper pavilion, she could hear voices and laughter, the crackle of the gramophone that was playing the chairman’s Harry Lauder recording again.

  “Ready?” Della asked.

  “I almost wish I’d stayed at home,” she said.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” said Peter, already heading into the foyer.

  “Frankly, I’m excited,” said Della, following. “I can’t wait to see him.”

  Maddy closed her eyes. Was he still here?

  Would she even recognize him if he was?

  She wasn’t sure.

  She really wasn’t sure.

  And Della and Peter had disappeared down the terrace toward the stairs, yet she couldn’t seem to move, and now she’d have to go in by herself.

  Perhaps she’d just stay where she was a while longer.

  Even as she thought it, she walked, her feet seeming to move of their own volition, along the tiled terrace with the empty playing fields stretching to her left, then up the double staircase, past the stained-glass windows and the grandfather clock, toward the hot buzz of the bar.

  She paused again on the threshold. The ceiling punkahs swooshed overhead, wafting air over her clammy neck, her cheeks. Lamps burned on every spare surface, scenting the smoky air with oil, turning the room’s mahogany paneling a rich golden brown. Her eyes moved, looking for him, or the shape of him, but she was too nervous and couldn’t absorb anything beyond disjointed snapshots of the scene before her. One blink showed her men in evening dress playing cards by the shuttered windows, even more lining the bar. Another, Diana Aldyce at a round table, her brunette head thrown back at something a young sergeant was saying, Captain Aldyce fiddling at his mustache beside her. She blinked again, this time seeing couples dancing on the only free space of polished floor, arms around one another, moving to the beat of the music, much slower than her own racing pulse. She turned her head and saw the punkah wallahs lining the wooden walls, their faces blank as they pulled the fans’ cords. Then, the sunburned sailor she’d danced with at New Year’s; he waved at her from across the room, but Guy, in evening dress, didn’t, because he had his back to her, was talking with his deputy from the hospital, and hadn’t yet seen that she was there.

  Just as she couldn’t see Luke Devereaux.

  She moved, toward where Della and Peter had stopped at the end of the bar, anxiety growing, but with it a horrible flatness, because he wasn’t there.

  He really didn’t seem to be there.

  We took too long, she thought.

  Except then Diana Aldyce turned toward her, her rouged mouth still wide with laughter, and seemed to go still at something beyond Maddy’s shoulder. Maddy watched the way her eyes sharpened in interest, and felt the hairs on the back of her own neck stand on end.

  There was a pause.

  She held her breath.

  “Hello, Miss Bright,” came a low voice from behind, full of warmth, full of fun. And which she liked.

  Which she liked very much.

  Moving without thinking, because it would have been impossible to do anything else, she turned.

  Dark eyes met hers. Deep and bright, they sparked with enjoyment. For a beat, they were everything. Then, so much else followed: his shoulders, lean yet strong beneath his evening jacket, the slant that she remembered so well; the way he stood, hands in his pockets, just as he had on the promenade, so relaxed, so near. His skin, tanned by the Indian sun, the cut of his jaw, his cheekbones; his face, which she knew, and which she saw now she’d have known anywhere.

  And which she liked.

  Which she liked very much.

  He stared, taking her in as well, making her wonder what he was seeing, what he thought. “It’s very nice to meet you at last,” he said.

  Somehow, she managed to reply. “It’s very nice to meet you, too, Luke Devereaux.”

  His lips moved in a smile.

  She felt hers do the same.

  He’s here, she thought, really here.

  This is happening.

  * * *

  The silence between them stretched, at once wonderful and unbearable, her smile growing the longer it went on, skin becoming hotter, until, compelled to break it, she thanked him for the silk, his guidebook, and postcards, talking every bit too much (she almost wished Della were there to hear it), the words rushing from her. “I haven’t given you anything, though,” she said. “It all feels rather one-sided.”

  “Not at all,” he said. “I hope it was the right silk?”

  “It was,” she said.

  “Good,” he said, and smiled again, the muscles in his face moving easily, as though used to his doing that. “I wanted you to have it.”

  “I love it,” she said, and didn’t tell him it was meant to have been for her aunt. “What were you even doing in the market, though?”

  “Trying to find you,” he replied, so plainly, so unapologetically, that she was glad she’d asked. And, as he went on, telling her how worried Fraser Keaton had been, how late he’d made himself chasing her, she found herself laughing, in spite of her nerves, loving that he’d done that.

  “I wish Fraser hadn’t told Guy as well,” she said.

  “I wish he hadn’t either,” he said.

  “You should have shouted louder,” she said.

  “I should have, Miss Bright.”

  “You can call me Maddy, Luke Devereaux.”

  Another slow smile. “I’ll bear that in mind,” he said.

  The gramophone petered into silence. For that moment, with the music gone, it was like the club went, too, and it was just them, looking at one another.

  She realized how much she wanted it to be just them.

  But,
as someone reset the needle, filling the room with song once more, Della and Peter came over, all noise and chatter, very much there, Peter wondering if the pair of them had any intention of moving at some point, congratulating Luke on surviving the afternoon, “Apologies for Aldyce. He does go on,” Della insisting on being introduced. “I would tell you I’d heard lots about you,” she said to Luke, “but,” arch look at Maddy, “I’m afraid it would be a lie.”

  “No,” said Luke.

  “Yes,” said Della, “isn’t it too awful?”

  Maddy drew breath, to say what she didn’t know, but then even more people were there: Peter’s crowd, wanting to know what was keeping Luke (“Oh hello, Maddy darling”), shaking Peter’s hand, kissing Maddy and Della, inquiring as to whether they’d been offered a drink.

  “Not a sniff of it,” said Della. “I might have to return to the north.”

  “No,” came the chorus, “don’t do that.”

  “You mustn’t,” said Diana Aldyce, sashaying over, predictably unable to stay away. (Now she was here, Maddy was amazed she’d waited so long.) “You’re very naughty for abandoning us.”

  “I’ll be sure to ask your permission next time,” said Della.

  “Good girl,” said Diana.

  “I wasn’t being serious,” said Della.

  Maddy hardly heard. She was too distracted by Luke’s gaze, the way he was watching her.

  “Oh God,” said Peter, “here comes the husband.”

  Anyone else? Maddy thought.

  “Devereaux,” said Captain Aldyce. “I must just bend your ear.”

  “Must you?” said Luke, still looking at Maddy.

  “I really must,” he said.

  But he didn’t get to, because one of Peter’s friends interjected, suggesting they all reconvene at the table, “No shop talk, though, Aldyce. All work and no play makes Ernest a dull boy,” and everyone was off, across the room, pulling out seats, pouring glasses of champagne, Ernest Aldyce telling Luke to sit, really, what he had to say wouldn’t take long (“I’ve heard that before,” said Luke, not sitting), the sunburned sailor asking if he might join them, Guy looking over as though he was thinking of doing the same thing, and suddenly Maddy, not sitting either, knew that she mustn’t, that if she did, the night, already more than half over, was going to be gone and she and Luke wouldn’t have had another chance to be alone again. No one was going to let them.

  “Mr. Devereaux,” said Diana, as though further evidence were needed, “are you ever going to take me for a turn on the floor?”

  It was like she and Ernest were in cahoots.

  “I’ll dance with you, Diana,” offered Peter, falling on his sword.

  “I’ve danced with you a hundred times,” said Diana.

  “Why not make it a hundred and one?” said Della, with a tight smile.

  Maddy was fairly confident Diana wasn’t going to make it a hundred and anything. She suspected Peter, already topping up his glass, knew it, too. She didn’t wait to find out. Stopping only to catch Luke’s eye, let him see her meaning, she turned, away from Diana, away from them all, and, unable to quite believe she was doing it, left.

  As she walked across the crowded room, her breaths came a little quick, a little shallow, nerves back in earnest. Her skirt skimmed the tables of others, and she felt that everyone must be watching her, that they knew what she was about: Guy, Peter’s friends, Diana. Their attention prickled, needling at the flushed skin on her bare back, her arms.

  Her steps didn’t falter, though. She walked on, faster, through the doors, back down to the terrace, toward the playing fields beyond, and cared about only one thing: that Luke had understood just now, that he saw where she was going.

  And that he followed.

  * * *

  The fields were deserted, the dry grass baked hard, uneven from the hooves of the polo ponies who galloped over it daily. The shadowy palms on the periphery shook, leaves rustling, a soft accompaniment to the muted music playing on in the club behind, the distant thrum of the city’s horns and rickshaw bells.

  Not wanting to linger too near to where everyone else was, she walked on, her skirts wisping on the parched lawn, toward the rattan loungers on the farthest side of the pitch. As she came to a halt, she sneaked a backward glance toward the clubhouse. The grass behind her was still empty, still silent.

  Drawing another ragged breath, she sat. Bats hovered in the still blackness, wings flickering; dark on darker. Cicadas nested all around. Such a world away from England, Oxford, and she couldn’t remember ever having felt less homesick.

  She wished, though, that she’d thought to bring a glass of champagne out with her. Or brandy. Bracing. She didn’t really want a cigarette, but, too jittery to do nothing, she reached into her purse anyway.

  Then stopped.

  Were they footsteps?

  She sat quite still, listening.

  They were.

  She swallowed, not moving, almost too afraid to look in case it was Guy coming to ask what she was doing out here all alone, or Della. He’s gone home; I’m sorry.

  She knew, though, that it wasn’t Guy, or Della. Her heart quickened, knowing it, too. She stared at her lap, picturing him coming toward her. When she turned, needing to see after all, he was even closer than she’d imagined, so close that she felt the shock of his eyes meeting hers, saw them flash in a look that was half amusement, half challenge.

  “Was this a test, Miss Bright?” he said. “To see if I could find you?”

  “Well, you passed,” she said, and couldn’t believe she managed to sound so normal.

  He came to a halt. “I was going to get us away from the table, you know.”

  “You were?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I was going to ask you to dance.”

  She arched her neck, looking up at him, adjusting, still, to his being there, really there. “And after that?” she said.

  “Another dance,” he said.

  “Then?”

  He gave a low laugh. “Another.”

  “Yes,” she said, still marveling at her own composure. “I see where this is going.”

  “Peter told me how clever you are.”

  It was her turn to laugh. “So, we’d have just kept dancing,” she said. “To Harry Lauder. I warn you, they keep playing him.”

  “I’d noticed,” he said.

  “And it was so hot in there.”

  “Yes,” he said, “I’d noticed that, too.”

  “Hmm,” she said, cocking her head to one side. “I think I prefer my plan.”

  “I think I do, too,” he said. “But we won’t be left alone for long.”

  He sat, his knee almost touching hers.

  “No?” This time she heard the tension in her voice.

  “No. Peter was worried. Something about your reputation.”

  “It’s not safe with you?” she said, speaking without thinking, feeling her cheeks flame at what had come out.

  He smiled back at her. I’m not entirely sure, he seemed to say.

  I’m not entirely sure I mind, she found herself thinking.

  His smile deepened, like he’d heard.

  The moment went on. She had to fight not to drop her gaze.

  He didn’t look away either.

  At length, he said, “Since we don’t have much time, we’d better not waste it.”

  “Best not,” she said.

  “We don’t know each other.”

  “Not at all,” she agreed.

  “Shall we do something about that, then?” he said.

  “Yes,” she said, “I think we should.”

  So they did.

  He started, asking her how long she’d lived in England before she returned to Bombay. “Peter told me you were born here.”

  “Yes,” she said, silently absorbing how much he and Peter seemed to have spoken about her, enjoying the thought. “I left when I was seven, fifteen years ago.”

  “A long time,” he said.
/>   “A very long time,” she said, and went on, haltingly at first, getting used to the idea of her words in his ears, talking of the stories she’d been told of her childhood illnesses, her foggy memories of soft hands on her forehead (“Your ayah’s?” he asked. “I’m not sure,” she said), the little monkeys that someone had sewn into her mosquito net, then the voyage to England, how little she recalled of it. “Just the cold, as we’d got closer. And playing quoits on deck with my father.”

  “Your mother wasn’t there?”

  “She didn’t come. I don’t know why.”

  “Too hard for her?” he suggested.

  “Perhaps,” she said, thinking of those fireworks, the painted stones.

  “You’re not sure?”

  She shrugged. “My mother’s not a simple person to read.”

  “But you’re trying.”

  “I think we’re both trying,” she said, realizing the truth of it as she spoke. “It’s not easy.”

  “Because you don’t want to be here?”

  She gave a wry smile. “I certainly didn’t plan to be,” she said, and found herself going on, without really meaning to, just because he was so very easy to talk to, relaying the shock of her holiday becoming permanent, the news of her lost teaching position in Oxford, even speaking of Edie and Fitz’s divorce, Fitz’s marriage to her old school friend. “The daughter of one of the governors at the school I was meant to work at, in fact.”

  His steady gaze didn’t alter. She could tell he already knew about Edie and Fitz, probably also about Fitz’s new baby, due any day. She wasn’t surprised; most people did. But she liked that he wasn’t embarrassed, or making a fuss.

  “Your father must worry about your aunt” was all he said.

  “He doesn’t talk about it,” she said, “but he must.” Thinking of Edie all alone in Scotland, she did then admit that the silk had been meant as a gift for her.

  Luke stared, and she laughed, feeling some of the seriousness that had been building between them dissolve. “I’m sorry,” she said.