Meet Me in Bombay

by Jenny Ashcroft

  Every night, she wanted him to go on, for them to go on.

  She didn’t know how to tell him that, though.

  Was there even form for asking a man to ruin you?

  “No,” said Della as they took tea one steamy morning. The heat sat like a damp blanket over Peter’s drooping trees, the dead grass. “Unequivocally, no.”

  “You’re no use,” said Maddy.

  “Sorry about that,” said Della, taking a bite of a cardamom bun. “Maybe you shouldn’t take my word for it anyway. I have absolutely no experience of all this.”

  “Neither do I,” said Maddy.

  “I’m not sympathizing,” said Della. “I’m far too envious. Talking of which, Diana was asking about you last night, complaining that she hadn’t seen hide nor hair of you or Luke in far too long. I think she’d rather like a bit of ruination care of Mr. Devereaux herself.”

  “She can make do with Ernest,” said Maddy.

  “Ugh,” said Della, spraying crumbs, “just imagine.”

  Maddy really didn’t want to.

  “Back to your conundrum,” said Della, chewing. “In my view, you either need to brazen it out, this is the twentieth century after all, or wait for him to do it for you.”

  Maddy’s brow creased, replaying his words. I’m not sure what you’re doing to me. “I think he might be waiting, too.”

  “Well then,” said Della, “you know what to do.”

  * * *

  He had been waiting.

  He’d been driving himself to distraction, waiting. Twentieth century it might be, but he knew how the world worked, and they were causing enough of a stir as it was. (Peter had kept him well abreast of the gossip: “The mems can hardly believe their luck. Alice and Richard’s daughter…”) Luke couldn’t have cared less for himself, but he cared for her: whether it would, eventually, upset her; if for him to ask for more would be too much.

  Night after night, he thought about nothing but her. He lay sweating and sleepless in his bed, the waves lapping the walls of his building below, and replayed every minute they’d shared: the sound of her voice, her laughter, each turn of her head, her every look and smile—thousands now, filling his mind.

  He didn’t know what they were going to do. He couldn’t stay on in India, of that much he was certain. He’d been happy enough to come back, to have this second taste of everything he’d fallen under the spell of back when he was an army captain—the vast beauty of the country, its raw life, heat, and color—but a handful of months had been more than enough to remind him of why he’d been so desperate to leave then. Nothing else but being with her could have compelled him to stay so long in the frenetic chaos, the entitlement everywhere. The thought of getting to her each evening was all that kept him going through the endless days of meetings, the drills in exposed, fly-infested parade grounds, the hours consumed sweating in traffic, being civil to people who were all too often anything but to their hosts.

  He wanted to take her to England with him, of course he did (however horrendous he felt about what that would do to her mother, and he felt awful. “So you should,” said Peter. “Poor Alice. Richard says she’s beside herself”); he’d wanted to do that from the moment he’d returned to Bombay and caught sight of her in that packed bazaar. But it had only been a few months. He didn’t want to rush her, rush anything. Not when he didn’t need to. No one was putting him under any pressure to return to England, after all (quite the opposite; MOST GRATEFUL FOR YOUR SERVICE STOP); it felt for the best to hold off asking her.

  And if he was holding off asking that, he surely shouldn’t ask anything else either.

  So he’d been waiting.

  Not wanting to rush her.

  On the early June evening that he borrowed another boat from the Yacht Club, planning to take her, as promised, to the beach he’d spoken about at the Gymkhana Club, see if they could find those turtles hatching, he hand on heart had no thoughts of doing any more than going for another sail, sitting side by side with her on the sands.

  It made him happy, of course, that she had other ideas for the evening. It made him bloody ecstatic. But he had no intentions himself.

  Not really.

  Not seriously.

  No, he didn’t.

  (“Liar,” she said afterward.)

  She was oddly keyed up from the second she ran out to meet him in the driveway. Her cream skin had an unusual heat to it, her smile a devilish slant. He didn’t read anything into it, though, or that she was quieter than usual on the walk down to the beach, then again as they sailed across the pink-tinged sea, the sky aglow with the setting sun. He was too caught up in watching her watch the water, blond curls loose, her chin pressed to her shoulder, bare but for the capped sleeves of her dark evening dress.

  They arrived at the beach just as the sun was disappearing. The sands were deserted. Aside from the gentle break of the waves, the swooping gulls, it was silent. Only the smoke rising from the thick vegetation behind, carrying the scent of charcoal and grilled spices, gave away that there was anyone else nearby at all.

  He steered them on, toward the shore. She leaned over the boat, peering down, biting her lip. It had been another boiling day. The heat on the horizon was still as fierce as any European noon. He could almost feel her temptation.

  “You should go in,” he said.

  “How warm is it?” she asked.

  “Like a bath,” he said. He swam every morning, from the cove by his rooms.

  “A bath,” she echoed.

  She peeled off her gloves. He watched her do it. He couldn’t look away. Her fingers trembled as she dipped them into the water.

  She was nervous. The realization struck him. He didn’t immediately understand why, but his chest contracted, seeing it. He didn’t want her to be nervous. Not with him. Not ever. It was the last thing he wanted for her. Just as he hadn’t been able to stand the thought of her homesick. He’d barely known her five minutes before he’d never wanted her to be anything but happy.

  And now, right now, with his own back prickling with perspiration beneath his shirt, he wanted her to know what it felt like to have the Arabian Sea drench the sweat from your skin, to not sit a second longer cooking in stockings and corset and God only knew what else.

  “That’s not going in,” he said.

  “No?” she said, turning; that slanted smile.

  “I think you know, no,” he said, still not entirely clear what he was about to do, but going to her, the boat rocking beneath him, laughing at the way she burst out laughing, her eyes wide, incredulous. “You definitely do know how to swim?” he said.

  “I do,” she said, “but—”

  He didn’t wait for her to finish. He pulled her up, into his arms, feeling her laughter all through her body, loving how that felt, and, ignoring her protests about her dress, his clothes, threw them both in, not letting her go, not even when the water rushed up, surrounding them.

  He was still laughing when they came up for air. So was she, her hair plastered over her cheeks, face as incensed as it was delighted.

  “I can’t believe you did that,” she said. “My mother’s going to kill you.”

  “I don’t want to talk about your mother,” he said, kissing her. “Stop talking about your mother.”

  She laughed more, kissing him back, stronger, more insistent than he’d known her; the same urgency he felt. He held her tighter, half carrying her against the weight of her gown pulling her down, feeling her lips give beneath his. Her hands ran down his back, skimming his sopping shirt, the muscles either side of his spine, each one tensing in turn. He kissed her throat, her collarbone, tasting salt, the night’s heat on her skin. Moving without thinking, he reached around her back, about to undo the clasps on her bodice, then paused: one last hesitation.

  She looked at him, the sky turning black behind her. She dipped forward, her lips to his ear. “You have my permission,” she whispered.

  He groaned inwardly, and knew he wasn’t waitin
g. Not anymore.

  “Am I brazen?” she asked.

  “You’re an absolute harlot,” he said. “But I love you for it.”

  “You love me?” she said, a smile in her voice.

  He kissed her more. “You know I love you.”

  They stayed in the water a long time that night, taking off their clothes, throwing them into the boat, never letting one another go, not even for an instant. “Like a bath,” she said, breathless. He kissed every part of her, in the way he’d been aching to do, slowly, savoring each second, not rushing her, not rushing anything. He felt her every movement, every touch, and wanted nothing more than for it to go on, on and on.

  They never did see any turtles hatch that night. He forgot they’d come to see them at all. They swam back to the boat, the life jackets as pillows beneath them, her head on his chest, hand in his hand, and he forgot everything but her. Nothing else mattered. There was no mother who didn’t want her daughter stolen. No kaiser. No sepoys. No bayonet practices, or broadsheets talking of the intensifying European climate, how Germany, Austria-Hungary, and indeed everyone except Britain needed to keep their imperial ambitions in check.

  It was just them.

  All they needed.

  He was always glad, afterward, that they had that. That for those hours when they lay together in the swaying boat, talking for the first time of a riverside in Richmond, and a house that would feel far too empty without her in it, they’d been oblivious to how much of a fantasy it all really was. That they’d been happy, so unreservedly happy.

  With no idea of just how soon that was all going to change.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  King’s Fifth Military Convalescent Hospital, 1917

  The drawing room was busy, bustling in fact, filled with nurses, several orderlies, and all the patients, too. The fire roared in the grate. Lamps of varying shapes and sizes burned on the coffee tables, the windowsills and mantelpiece, warming the watery, gray light.

  It was winter.

  Again.

  And it was snowing, just as it had been that November day Jones had arrived.

  Earlier, he’d wrapped himself in a greatcoat, pulled on boots, and trekked with some of the orderlies through the thick drifts, out to the surrounding forests to cut down a fir. He’d walked briskly, savoring being out, losing his breath; becoming, for just one short hour, something other than a patient. This was the third time he’d made such a trek. His third Christmas at the King’s Fifth.

  He’d hoped so much he’d only see one. (“We all hoped that,” said Arnold sadly.)

  On clear days, they could still hear the guns, not at the Somme these past months, but Passchendaele. The battle, now drawing to a close, had cost hundreds of thousands more lives. Jones had met one of the men who’d been out there. The man had spoken, before Sister Lytton had interceded to stop him upsetting himself, of the way the Ypres soil had turned to swamp in the rain, men falling and drowning in the mud.

  “Yes,” Jones had found himself saying, “I remember that,” and then stopped, hearing his own words, I remember, heart quickening in wonder, anticipation of …

  Nothing.

  Nothing else had come. He’d never been able to think what had made him say it in the first place. It had been a tease: a memory of a memory, but no more than that.

  That soldier had already left, home to his wife in Portsmouth and a local doctor Arnold had referred him to for the condition he called shell shock. So many others had left, too; hardly any of the patients in residence when Luke had first arrived were still with him. There had been many who’d become well enough to be cared for by their families. Several had got completely better, seemingly overnight (a miracle Jones couldn’t help himself hoping for, even if it would mean going back to the trenches). A couple the year before had given up and left the hospital in another way, which had made Jones so desperately sad; selfishly afraid, too, that he could end up like that.

  “Not you,” said Arnold. “You have too much to live for, my man.”

  Sister Lytton had taken their deaths very hard, saying again and again that she’d let her boys down. After the second one had gone, just after the Somme the year before, she’d left, too, for an entire month.

  “A spot of leave,” Arnold had told Jones. “She’ll be back with her cups of cocoa before you know it, you’ll see.”

  “I hope so,” Jones had said. Exhausting as he sometimes found Sister Lytton’s cheeriness, it had been awful to see it leach from her.

  He’d told her that, when she’d returned that October.

  “You missed me, Officer Jones?” she’d asked, and had looked so happy at the idea of it, that he’d said, “Yes, of course I missed you.”

  He had, he supposed. As much as he had it in him to miss anyone.

  “What’s been happening here while I’ve been away?” she’d asked, and he’d told her about the masked captain’s wife visiting—an aloof, overly manicured woman—and how he, Jones, had only seen her fleetingly as she’d departed, sweeping out through the hallway with the VAD Poppy, both of them seemingly oblivious to the sobbing wreck of a man they’d left behind. He’d barely paid the pair any attention. He’d been too preoccupied with consoling his strange friend. (“D-D-Di…” the captain had said. “No,” Jones had assured him, “you don’t want to die. There’s been enough of that.”)

  “What did VAD Reid say she was like?” Sister Lytton had asked.

  “She didn’t say anything, really,” he’d replied, not going into the cross words they’d shared afterward.

  “Well, that’s hardly like her,” Sister Lytton had said. “It might surprise you,” she’d gone on, “but she was much meeker when she first started, before you got here.”

  It had surprised him.

  He struggled to believe it now, watching Poppy in the drawing room, anything but meek, rather instructing, skirts swishing back and forth as she moved before the Christmas tree, telling the orderlies to move it to the left, no the right, back to the left, no, no, not too close to the fire.

  “What do you think, Officer Jones?” she said, throwing him one of her arch looks. “Am I getting it all wrong? Do I need a hand?”

  Somehow, she managed to make it sound suggestive. Jones didn’t raise a brow, though, as she seemed to be waiting for him to do.

  Nor did he keep looking when she grabbed for a bauble, turned, hitching her skirts to climb onto the stepladder, exposing thick woolen stockings.

  He closed his eyes. As always, they fell easily. He was even more tired than normal after that walk. Would he ever stop being so tired?

  He leaned back in his chair. Heaviness drooped over him, the suck of sleep approaching. Dimly, he felt a flicker of anticipation: the coming of a dream.

  But this time, it wasn’t one he wanted to be in. There was no color, no light, nothing warm or familiar at all. Black shapes moved before his eyes: oval leaves swaying in a threatening sky; a thick density of storm clouds behind.

  That was all there was. Such darkness.

  Darkness, and an overwhelming sense of grief.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Bombay, June–July 1914

  They had a fortnight before the news came of the Austro-Hungarian archduke’s assassination. A fortnight when the clouds built, thickening in the sky ahead of the rains, the Aldyces went on summer leave back in England, so many others prepared for a break in the hills, and Maddy and Luke continued to let Maddy’s parents think they went out each night to restaurants, curry houses, and markets, but stole instead to Luke’s rooms on the water’s edge, which he finally took Maddy to the evening after their trip not seeing any turtles. She walked around in the lantern light, that first time, acutely conscious of how little she should really be there, loving so much that she was. Her feet padded on the warm terra-cotta floors, her eyes moved, taking in the ornately carved doors, the latticed shutters at the windows, the silvery sea, just visible through the pattern, and she thought she had never been anywhere more be
autiful.

  “I can see why you prefer this to the Taj,” she said.

  “Yes,” he said, kissing her ear, her neck. “There are other reasons, too, of course.”

  When they were cocooned in those rooms, the rest of the world disappeared, and the two of them were untouchable, invincible. They worried over nothing. While they spoke from time to time about whether they really shouldn’t be more careful about chancing a baby, neither of them ever did anything about it. Maddy wasn’t sure she really wanted to. In truth, she hardly thought about it. All she thought about was Luke.

  Whenever they got hungry, he’d fetch their dinners from a nearby street vendor, pulling on trousers, a shirt. She’d wrap herself in a sheet while he was gone, pour warm champagne into ceramic mugs. They ate by candlelight, nestled lazily together in the bedroom window seat, hidden from view behind shutters open to the humid breeze, the sea rippling blackly below.

  It was the night before the archduke was shot, as they lay on his low bed, his hand on her waist, hers on his tanned shoulder, fingers lazily running over the dip and curve of his arm, that he told her he had something for her.

  “Hmm?” she said drowsily.

  “Hmm,” he said, far more awake. “I do.” He turned on the pillow, lithely reaching down to the floor below the bed.

  She watched him, more awake herself now, but not suspecting, not straightaway.

  He lay back down, facing her, a velvet pouch in his hand.

  She eyed it. “That’s not a guidebook,” she said slowly.

  “No,” he said, eyes reflecting the candles’ glow, “it’s not.”

  “Or silk,” she said.

  “Or silk,” he agreed, holding it out to her: such a tiny little parcel.

  She stared, not touching it, suspicion growing, feeling the nudge of a smile.

  “Is it earrings?” she said.

  He laughed at that. “Look, why don’t you?”

  So she did, sitting up, taking the pouch. Fingers far from steady, she pulled the drawstring, smile growing; the heat of his gaze on her skin. She peeked in, eyes widening at the handful of diamonds, loose and sparkling inside.