Meet Me in Bombay

by Jenny Ashcroft

  “What are you sorry for?” he asked.

  “I don’t know exactly,” she said, still laughing.

  He smiled. “I think we’d better find her something else,” he said.

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

  And, not wanting to go back to speaking of sad things, she changed the subject, saying she felt like she’d talked more than enough, and it was his turn now.

  “What do you want to know?” he asked, leaning back, lighting a cigarette, the flame illuminating his tanned skin, the firm lines of his face, and offering it to her. She took it absently, finally asking him what he was doing in India, how long he’d been here before, why he’d stopped being a soldier, and what had made him become one in the first place.

  He pulled another cigarette from his case and lit it. “That’s a lot of questions, Miss Bright.”

  “Fine,” she said. “Why did you join the army?”

  “Because I was eighteen, and had no idea what else to do.”

  “Why did you leave?”

  He exhaled smoke, like it was a long story, and then made fairly short work of it, saying how little he’d liked the rigidity of the life, the insularity of the cantonments, and had given it up as soon as he could. “The only thing that ever felt right, was leaving.”

  “You were with the Indian Army?” she guessed. There were hardly any British regiments in India; almost all British officers were here to lead the sepoys.

  “I was,” he said.

  “So you speak Urdu?”

  “You have to.”

  She nodded. She knew that. Unlike other colonies, the native soldiers here weren’t expected to speak English, even if they were barred from commanding themselves. “And you still work for the army now?”

  “Not directly. I’ve been at Whitehall, for five years now. But I was asked to do this project.”

  “Which is?”

  “Classified,” he flicked ash, “and quite uninteresting.” Then it was his turn to change the subject, asking her to tell him what she’d been doing while he was gone.

  She almost kept probing, but stopped herself. It was obvious he didn’t want to dwell on his work, and she didn’t want to ask him to, not if it would make him uneasy. Already, she only wanted to make him happy.

  So instead she said, “Exploring, thanks to you,” and told him how much she’d enjoyed reading his book, laughing at her abortive trip to the spice market, telling him of the mosque she’d visited instead.

  “I’m not sure I’ve heard of that one,” he said.

  “I’m not sure anyone has,” she said ruefully.

  “But you got to the spice market in the end?”

  “I did,” she said, and, realizing her cigarette had gone out, she set it down and talked of how she’d shocked herself by staying so long, then of the children at the dargah, the crowded trams; the amount of money she’d lost bribing Ahmed into cooperation.

  “And you never felt unsafe?” he said. “I hope you didn’t.”

  “Not once,” she said.

  “Good,” he said, finishing his own cigarette, “that’s good.”

  He told her more of his own travels: the years he’d spent in Bombay, his experiences of the same places she’d been to, others that she hadn’t. He spoke of a stretch of coast, not far away, where every year, around this time, turtles hatched with the full moon.

  “I’d love to see that,” she said.

  “Yes,” he said, smiling, as though he’d love her to, too.

  The music continued behind them. Occasionally a burst of laughter, a shout, fractured the sultry air, reminding her of the clubhouse, everyone still in it. Mostly, she didn’t think about them at all. She watched his face as he talked, his every turn of expression, feeling the energy in him, an answering beat in herself, the urge to reach out, touch him, stronger with every minute. He leaned toward her, closer, feeling it, too, until only the barest slice of air separated them. One move, and it would be gone.

  They fell silent. She wasn’t sure, anymore, how long they’d been talking. He looked across at her, like he was seeing her for the first time. I like him, she thought. I like him so much. A soft gust of wind snaked through the trees, the grass. She felt her chest rise, fall; the sense of something coming.

  “Did you ever worry?” he asked.

  “Worry?” she said.

  “That we might be wrong,” he said.

  “No,” she said, “not really.”

  “No,” he said, “I didn’t either,” and, hearing his quiet bemusement, she was glad, that it was strange for him, too. “I don’t feel like I’ve only just met you,” he said.

  “No,” she said softly.

  “Can I still see you tomorrow?” he asked.

  “You know you can,” she said.

  “I’m with your father, first thing. I’d better tell him.”

  “It’s not my father you have to worry about,” she said, barely aware of her words.

  He smiled. “I’ll come and collect you,” he said. “No more bribing your bearer.”

  “For coffee?”

  “Not for coffee.”

  “Where then?”

  “Does it matter?” he asked, his lips all but brushing hers.

  “No,” she said, “I don’t suppose it does.”

  His eyes blurred in hers.

  She wasn’t sure she breathed.

  “Maddy,” came Peter’s voice from the terrace, making her start. “Time to go.”

  For a second, neither of them moved. Then Luke dropped his head. He looked up at her, gave a short, silent laugh. She smiled, self-conscious now, at what had so nearly happened.

  “Maddy.” Peter again. “If your father dismisses me, I’m suing for recompense.”

  With a reluctant sigh, Luke stood. He offered her his hand. Reaching up, she took it, feeling his fingers close around hers, the warmth of him through her glove.

  She still felt it, even after he’d pulled her to standing, had let her go.

  “Madeline. Madeline Bright. I really don’t want to have to come and find you. It’s dark.”

  Luke smiled down at her. “Until tomorrow,” he said.

  “Until tomorrow,” she echoed.

  It wasn’t so very long to wait.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  King’s Fifth Military Convalescent Hospital, 1916

  He slept; the consuming sleep of deep night. He was outside, a black expanse of lawn surrounding him. She was there, too, walking away. He watched her steps, so slow, lingering. He felt like he might be smiling. She wore a dark dress. He saw how it dipped, low, forming a V on her spine, the hem trailing on the grass. Her blond curls, silver in the night, dripped from her headband, skimming her neck.

  At last. The voice, a man’s, came through the night. It was familiar, pleasantly so. Diana’s been having a field day.

  His eyes snapped open. Awake.

  He stared at the shadowy ceiling cornices above, breaths coming nauseatingly quickly. Where am I?

  Who am I?

  It took him less than a second to remember that he didn’t know who he was. Then, as the rest followed—how he’d woken, lost in a soundless forest, no jacket, no identity tags, then gone from there to that frantic casualty clearing station, on to Dieppe, the freezing journey across the Channel to the ward in London, the hospital he was in now—he punched his fists down on his sweat-drenched mattress, and yelled in anger, because it was either that or weep.

  Who was Diana? Who?

  Scrambling, he reached for his journal, and wrote the name down before it, like the woman in his dreams, could disappear.

  * * *

  He didn’t sleep again that night. He didn’t try to. It wasn’t that he wasn’t tired. He was still exhausted, all the time. It was that he’d never yet managed to return to the same dream, and he couldn’t face the disappointment of his own failure. He wanted to be back wherever he’d been too much. So he rose, lit an oil lamp, read through the non
sense in his journal, and then pushed it away, because in the darkness before the dawn it always felt especially hopeless.

  By the time Sister Emma Lytton came to his door, the inevitable mug of cocoa in hand, he was dressed, had opened the thick brocade drapes at his window, and made his bed. It never ceased to unnerve him that he knew how to do such things, yet couldn’t remember who had taught him. A mother, he was sure. He’d pushed himself, many times, to recall her. He wondered constantly if she, and his father, were still alive. He felt like they were; he didn’t know why. He realized they must believe him dead. (“And how do you feel about that?” Arnold had asked. “I hate it,” he’d said, feeling their pain, such needless pain, all through him. “I can’t put words to how much I hate it.”)

  “I expect you’re ready for breakfast, Officer Jones,” Sister Lytton said. “I saw your light burning at four.”

  He didn’t ask her why she’d been up so early. Arnold had told him of her dead fiancé, her brother. (“Another bruised soul,” Arnold had said.) She herself had admitted that she struggled to sleep. “Not that I’m complaining, of course.”

  “You’re allowed to,” Jones had told her.

  She’d laughed, like he’d made a joke.

  “Oh, Officer Jones,” she said now, “you’ve made your bed again.” She gave him a despairing look, as she did every morning.

  “If you keep doing that,” said the VAD with her (Poppy, she’d told Jones to call her), “I won’t have an excuse to come and see you.” Her lips pursed in suggestive smile. “And then where will we be?”

  Again, it wasn’t the first time Jones had heard the quip. Was this one of Arnold’s tricks, he sometimes wondered, asking the staff to repeat themselves over and over again? Sister Lytton’s disapproving frown at Poppy certainly came on cue. Even he played his part, telling Poppy he was sorry about the bed.

  “I’ll forgive you, Officer Jones,” she said, with another smile.

  He didn’t smile back. He never did.

  He stood to go downstairs with Sister Lytton, leaving his journal on his bed, and hardly noticed the way that Poppy watched him leave, dimples deepening.

  * * *

  The breakfast room was busy by the time he and Sister Lytton reached it. Not noisy, because no one really talked (every bite of toast, clink of cup, and sugar cube dropping in tea could be heard), but full. Several other nurses were there, supervising proceedings—they were always supervised—and almost all of the seats around the mahogany table were occupied by Jones’s fellow patients, hunched and pale and wearing the same stiff blue uniform he had on.

  Spotting a free seat beside the captain he’d seen in the drawing room when he’d first arrived at the King’s Fifth, the one who wore a mask on his shattered face, he made his way toward it. As he sat, he readied himself for the stuttered introductions. Unlike him, this captain forgot each day the second it passed. Jones had by now met him two hundred and three times—each day marked in his journal. Sister Lytton had told Jones, on one of the walks she liked them to take together (“Loneliness is no one’s friend”), that she made sure she was always by the captain’s side the second he woke each morning, ready to tell him where he was before he could start screaming in panic. There was a wife somewhere, too, but she never visited, only the mother. The longer she stayed with her son, the less he’d shake.

  Awful, though, how he cried when she left.

  “Hello,” Jones said to him now.

  “G-G … m-m-m…”

  “Morning,” said Jones.

  “I … I…”

  “Don’t think we’ve met,” said Jones, saving him the torture of getting the words out, shifting in his seat as Sister Lytton leaned between the two of them and reached across to the silver serving dishes with a waft of starch, lavender water, and carbolic soap. She fetched the captain’s bacon and toast, optimistically leaving them on his plate for him to eat, even though his shaking was so bad he struggled to cut his own food.

  Jones declined her offer to serve him, and as soon as she’d left, her nurse’s hood swaying as she circumnavigated the table, surveying what was and was not being eaten by everyone else, he reached for his companion’s plate, forced a smile in reply to his stuttered thanks (“S-s-such a b-b-buffoon t-t-t-today”), and sliced his bacon for him, buttered his toast, too, then cut it all into bite-size mouthfuls. He stared out through the dining room window as he worked. Winter had passed. Spring, too. The garden’s lawns were lush, dewy with the misty summer rain that had been falling since dawn.

  He slid the man’s plate of bacon and toast back to him. Gently, he took his cold fingers, feeling his dry skin, his bones, and placed them around his fork, then shifted his mask slightly so his food might reach his mouth.

  “There,” he said to him, “you’re all right now.” He didn’t know why he always said that.

  They were all of them anything but.

  * * *

  “He for one will never get any better if you keep helping him,” Arnold scolded Jones, later that same day as they sat together in the orchard.

  The small, wild corner of the grounds was Jones’s favorite part of the otherwise neatly landscaped gardens. The grass, in contrast to the hospital’s long, trimmed lawns, was earthy, unkempt, cluttered with leaves and fallen apples. The trees were heavy with many more of them, ripening pears, too, and the hedgerows plump with green and purple blackberries. There was a stream, tiny—more a trickle, really—but Jones loved the sound of it, the sense of it there; just like that voice before in his dream, the water felt familiar, comforting.

  The rain had started again. It dusted his woolen blues, Arnold’s tweed jacket and glasses. It was so thin, so fine, Jones felt as though he were breathing it. He arched his neck, staring into the white summer sky; the cool brush of moisture on his face.

  “Hardly rain at all, is it?” said Arnold.

  “No,” agreed Jones, and felt the oddest compulsion to compare it to something else, only he didn’t know what. His brow creased. He tried to think. It hurt, physically hurt in his head to do that, and it got him nowhere. But before he could vent the unbearable frustration of it, he heard a low grumbling in the sky. It wasn’t thunder. Arnold, who’d taken to speaking with him lately of France and Flanders (“You can cope with it, and one of these days I’ll happen upon a word or name that will mean something to you, I’m determined”), had told him that the noise came from the heavy guns at the Somme, and the battle that had been waging there since the first of July, already killing far too many.

  Jones closed his eyes, listening to the bombardment, thinking of the trenches he couldn’t remember, hoping the same rain wasn’t falling there. He imagined muddy rivers, men and boys sheltering beneath scraps of tarpaulin, bullets whistling by, and felt a tightness in his chest, of grief, of anger.

  He told Arnold about it. “I don’t know what makes that happen.”

  “Love,” said Arnold. “For your men.”

  “But I don’t remember them,” Jones said.

  “Not consciously,” said Arnold. “No.”

  “Not at all,” said Jones.

  Arnold said nothing.

  There was a short silence. A bird hopped among the windfall apples. The sky growled on. Howitzers, Jones thought, and couldn’t recall whether it was Arnold who’d told him that’s what the guns were called.

  “The nurses have taken a shine to you,” Arnold said, seeming to change the subject. “Sister Lytton, especially.”

  “She takes a shine to all her patients, I think,” said Jones.

  “She’s told me you make her think of her younger brother,” said Arnold.

  “Really?” said Jones, surprised and saddened in equal measure. How inadequately he must compare. “I wish she still had him.”

  “As do I,” said Arnold. “She has too good a heart to have lost so much.”

  “Yes,” agreed Jones, and resolved to be kinder the next time she suggested a walk.

  “There’s that VAD, too, o
f course,” said Arnold.

  “The VAD?” said Jones.

  “Hmm,” said Arnold, “the one who looks like she’s always on the edge of mischief.”

  “Poppy?”

  “Yes, Poppy,” Arnold said. “She’s very pretty. Makes me think of a dairymaid.”

  “I’m not sure she’s as wholesome,” said Jones.

  “Do you think her pretty?” Arnold asked. His tone was too careless. He was digging.

  Jones looked sideways at him, curious now as to where he was going. It was always somewhere. “I really hadn’t thought about it,” he said.

  “No?”

  “No,” said Jones, truthfully.

  “I can assure you,” said Arnold, “she is uncommonly pretty.”

  “Well, then,” said Jones, at a loss to know what else to say.

  “But you don’t think of her in that way,” said Arnold.

  It wasn’t a question, but Jones answered it anyway. “No,” he said, seeing again that black dress, those blond curls. “I don’t.”

  “You must have come across many nurses by now,” Arnold went on.

  “Yes.”

  “And you’ve never felt … tempted?”

  “Not once,” said Jones.

  “There you are then,” said Arnold, who hadn’t changed the subject at all. “Love.”

  “Love,” echoed Jones.

  “Yes.” Arnold’s eyes glinted behind his spectacles. “You remember plenty, my friend, I assure you. We just need to find out where it’s all hiding.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Bombay, Spring 1914

  Maddy woke late the morning after that first night with Luke, still absorbing that it had happened, smiling into her pillow because it had, replaying it all over again, the way he’d looked, opposite her in the darkness, that almost-kiss, I don’t feel like I’ve only just met you, biting her lip on the thrill that she was going to be with him again in just a couple of short hours, not quite able to absorb that either.

  From the silence in the house, she guessed her father was already at the office, perhaps with Luke even now. Luke wouldn’t have to tell him he was coming to call; she’d already done that for him. Richard had still been up when she’d returned home, waiting on the front porch in his dressing gown, despite his professed exhaustion, it being well past midnight. I wanted to make sure you’re really all right. He’d been as accepting as she’d known he would be when she’d said Luke was taking her out; surprised, but not unpleasantly so, telling her Luke had struck him as a good sort that afternoon.