Meet Me in Bombay

by Jenny Ashcroft

  “You can still travel back,” he said, trying for them both. “I’ll be here to see you off, there’s no plan for the Bombay divisions to go anywhere yet. That’s only Poona, Lahore…”

  “Then I’ll stay with you.”

  “No,” he said, “sail. I don’t know how long passenger ships will keep running. I’ll be just behind you.” He kissed her, pushing her back so that they were looking at one another. “The sepoys need training,” he said. “We’ll do that in England, I’m certain. I’ll get leave, come to see you. It might even all be over by the time we’re ready to fight. This doesn’t have to change anything for us.”

  She nodded, swallowed on her tears, and said nothing.

  It felt horribly like it was going to change everything.

  It was nicer not to say that out loud, though.

  * * *

  Peter, too, had been ordered to report to Whittaker. He came to tell Maddy and Luke, just after the sun had risen, its rays barely breaking through the thick, black clouds.

  He’d already spoken to the colonel. “It’s why I’m here,” he said, stepping through the door, shaking off his umbrella, shooting Luke a pained look. “I’m to fetch you to the cantonment, my friend.”

  “Whittaker wants me now?” Luke, only just dressed, said.

  “Yes, but let’s wait and blame the traffic. I’m in no rush to get back.” He pulled out one of the chairs and sat, hair flopping over his forehead. “Whittaker says you’re not to waste time trying to convince him you need your honeymoon,” he said. “Apparently my Urdu is worse than his four-year-old son’s, and you’ve been promoted to major already. So well done.”

  Luke wanted, very much, to punch the wall.

  “We should have got married last week,” said Maddy, clutching a cup of cold tea too tightly. The skin on her knuckles was pale, taut; Luke had never known hands could look so anxious. It made him ache. He wished he knew how to fix it for her, for them, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t think what to do. “We’d be on a ship by now,” she went on, “sitting in sun chairs on deck.”

  “Stop,” said Luke. “Please, stop.”

  “I’m afraid it gets worse,” said Peter.

  “How, worse?” asked Luke, barely wanting to know.

  Peter grimaced. “We’re not staying in Bombay.”

  Luke stared. “Where are we going?”

  “Karachi,” said Peter. “Tonight.”

  This time Luke did belt the wall.

  Peter sighed, like he sympathized, then told Luke what he already knew, but had never imagined would affect him: that the Third Lahores, one of the bigger units designated for immediate dispatch, were even lighter than the Bombay divisions on officers.

  “We’re to fold in with them,” said Peter, “sail with them from Karachi.”

  “What about the men here?” asked Luke, grappling for a way out. “Aldyce’s…?”

  “We’re taking half with us,” said Peter, “leaving the others for Whittaker to manage. He’s not very happy.”

  “He should have fought it,” said Luke.

  “I suggested as much,” said Peter. “He reminded me I’m in the army now.”

  “Christ,” said Luke raggedly.

  “Where will you sail to?” asked Maddy. “England?”

  “Probably,” said Luke, with more conviction than he felt. What he felt was sick. He had no idea where the Lahores would sail to, only that, unlike the Sixth Poona Division, it would at least be somewhere in Europe, not the Persian Gulf.

  Peter went on, saying he hadn’t told Della yet, but obviously couldn’t leave her here alone. He turned to Maddy, asking if she could travel home with her on the seventh.

  “Yes,” said Maddy flatly, eyes fixed on Luke, “of course.”

  He stared back at her, trying and failing to picture leaving her, tonight, tonight, combing his mind once again for a way out of it. There was no way, he knew. None at all.

  She came to him, wrapping her arms around his waist. He moved instinctively, pulling her closer, muscles easing at the touch of her body, the comfort, mind reeling that in just a few short hours he wasn’t going to have that anymore. They hadn’t had long enough, the two of them. It wasn’t enough. It could never be enough.…

  “We’ll be sailing at the same time,” he heard himself saying, to himself as much as her. “In a fortnight, we’ll be together again.”

  “A fortnight,” she echoed, looking up, her eyes bluer than ever; like glass.

  He summoned a smile, willing her to smile back.

  She tried to. He saw that in the movement of her cheeks. But it wouldn’t come. It was the first time he’d ever seen that happen to her, and it broke him.

  Had she known then, what was coming?

  He asked it of himself, so many times, in all that followed. Asked it of her, too, in his letters.

  No, she wrote back, how could I have known?

  * * *

  They planned that he’d go to the cantonment to see Whittaker, then come back so that they could spend the afternoon together, just as Peter was spending his with Della. (“I’m rather sad to leave her,” Peter said, “although obviously don’t tell her that.”) Whittaker, who wasn’t an unsympathetic man, had granted all of the men with families nearby time to say their goodbyes. “You sail to Karachi at eight,” he said. “Just be back for the transport to the port.”

  Luke didn’t want to think about the transport to the port. He wanted only to lie in bed with his wife, his wife he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to accept he could be lucky enough to have, and forget the uniform Whittaker had handed to him, the major’s stripes being sewn into the sleeves, the kit bag, rifle, and bayonet that all now bore his name.

  The last thing he’d thought to find, when he walked through the door of his rooms, was Maddy gone, and a hastily scribbled note saying that her father had taken her to Guy Bowen’s hospital. He’d never for a second imagined the two of them would spend the rest of the day side by side in a busy corridor, sitting in uncomfortable wooden chairs, waiting anxiously for Alice to regain consciousness, both trying to stay calm even though no one knew if Alice was going to be all right, and it felt like the world was turning on its head. They stared at the door of Alice’s room, the heartlessly turning clock, holding each other’s hands because that was all they could do, both wanting to be anywhere but where they were, the silence laden with the dread of their parting.

  Guy came. Luke had to hand it to him, he behaved impeccably, calmly telling Maddy she wasn’t to worry, Alice’s surgery had gone as well as it could have, speaking in the same unabashed manner Luke was accustomed to his own mother using when talking of medical matters. (He kept thinking of his mother. She’d be terrified today, he knew. She’d started her career as a nurse in the First Boer War, and had a horror of battlefields. Seeing her was the only silver lining he could find in his imminent departure.) Guy went on, saying how sorry he was to hear that Luke was leaving that night, truly seeming to mean it. Luke might almost have liked him, had he not been so sure he was in love with Maddy.

  “I’ll be going myself, soon,” Guy said, “but I’ll be here a while longer to take care of you all, Maddy.”

  “Excellent,” said Luke.

  “How long will Mama be in hospital for?” asked Maddy.

  “It depends,” said Guy. “The main thing is to keep her free of infection.” He looked back toward her room. “We don’t want a repeat of…” He stopped, appearing to check himself.

  Now why had he done that?

  Maddy, brow creased, was obviously wondering it, too. “A repeat of what?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” Guy said. “Forgive me, I’ve been up all night. I’m not sure why I said it.”

  “Can you say more now?” said Luke.

  “Really, no,” Guy said, turning. “And I must get on.…”

  “Wait,” said Luke, his impatience audible to his own ears.

  “Guy,” said Maddy, in much the same tone, “please.”
>
  “I’m sorry,” said Guy. “Do call for me if she wakes.”

  And with that, he was gone.

  Maddy stared after him, expelling a noise that was half resignation, half frustration.

  “Do you want me to go and make him tell you?” Luke offered.

  “It’s tempting,” she said. Her red-rimmed eyes moved back to Alice’s room, Richard keeping vigil by her bed. “I’ll ask Papa, though, once she’s awake.”

  She still wasn’t by the time dusk fell. Luke, grimly conscious of his ship waiting in harbor, could put off returning to the cantonment no longer, not if he wasn’t going to end up shot as a deserter. (Hardly ideal.) Besides, he had men now, hundreds of them in his charge; men who were leaving their families, too, their homes. A reluctant soldier he might be, but that was hardly their fault. They’d be waiting for him.

  “Making do with Peter’s desperate Urdu,” said Maddy, with another agonizing attempt at a smile, as together they set off, with the slowest of steps, through the hospital’s darkening corridors, out to the front porch.

  “What are you going to do?” he asked. “I don’t think you’re sailing anywhere yet.”

  “I don’t think I am either.” She looked over her shoulder, back toward Alice’s room. “I’ll do it as soon as I can.”

  He drew a long breath, deliberately not repeating his earlier warning that they didn’t know how long passenger ships would continue to run. He couldn’t ask her to leave her mother. He wouldn’t ask her to do that. Instead, he told her that he’d do his very best to be at the dock when she arrived in England. Even if he couldn’t be, he’d make sure to have his parents waiting for her. “They can show you the house. I’m sure they’d love you to stay with them if you like.…”

  “I’d rather you were there,” she said.

  “If I can, I will be,” he said.

  They reached the hospital doors. He pushed one wide, incredulous that he was putting one foot in front of the other when it felt like the worst kind of lunacy to do anything other than stay precisely where he was. Still, he held the door open, holding it back as she walked through.

  The rain was as torrential as ever. It bounced from the dirt driveway, splattering the tiles, their feet. The palms loomed tall against the blackening clouds, their oval leaves bowed with water. He narrowed his eyes at them, and, from nowhere, felt a grim punch of foreboding; the thought that once he went, he might never see such trees again.

  “Luke,” she said, as though she could sense his sudden fear. “Luke…” She touched his neck, drawing his attention back. He felt his stare soften as he met hers. She didn’t blink, or look away, as loath as he felt to do that. Her hair was messy, tangled with how many times she’d run her hands through it, chaotic with the humidity. Her skin was flushed, with heat, with grief, and he wanted to see her happy again. He wanted to make her happy. And he wanted to wake tomorrow and be with her. He wanted to be with her every day; talk to her, look at her, never not know what it felt like to do that.

  But since he couldn’t, he kissed her, and told her he loved her, again and again.

  She kissed him back. “I love you, too, I’ll love you forever. And I’ll see you soon.”

  “Soon,” he echoed. “Very soon.”

  He rested his forehead against hers, hands either side of her face, replaying that moment he’d first seen her: a beautiful stranger on the dark, Bombay promenade. He saw himself beneath the vaulted ceilings of the terminus’s entrance foyer, crouching on the mosaics, packaging up her matches, his guidebook, all the happiness still ahead of them. His mind filled with every look and word they’d shared since, and then, because that felt far too like a life flashing before his eyes, he pushed the images away, and promised himself there were more to come. Many, many more.

  “I’ll see you in England,” he said. “I’ll see you at home.”

  “Home,” she said, and this time her smile was real. “Yes.”

  He smiled, too, beyond grateful that she had, that he’d seen that again.

  There was so much more he wanted to say to her. But there wasn’t time. He knew there wasn’t time. And for now there really was only one word left that was possible.

  He just wished, so much more than he’d ever wished for anything, that it wasn’t “goodbye.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  She couldn’t bring herself to cancel her passage to England. She couldn’t even face returning to Luke’s rooms to fetch her trunk. The idea of entering that empty space, seeing the bed they’d slept in, the cups they’d drunk from, the window seat they’d lost all those many, many hours in, was too agonizing to bear. Della, without Maddy saying anything, understood; it was she who arranged for the trunk to be taken back to Maddy’s parents’. “I packed everything else up,” she said, when she found Maddy in the hospital room the morning after Luke and Peter had left for Karachi. “Dropped the key next door. I hope that was all right.”

  “Yes,” said Maddy, even though nothing was all right at all. “Thank you.”

  Della looked at Alice, sleeping again, far from restfully. “Is there really nothing else they can give her?” she asked, face creased by concern.

  “Nothing,” said Maddy, who’d asked the same question herself, terrified by the high, mottled color in her mother’s skin, the way her dry lips kept moving soundlessly, eyelids flickering. “She’s had all the morphia she’s allowed. It’s the fever that’s the problem.” It had started in the small hours: an infection not even Guy had been able to keep away. He’d said, just an hour before, that there was nothing they could do now but wait, hope for it to break.

  “Hope?” Maddy had said, her eyes raw from exhaustion, anger building, because it was too much, it was all too much.

  “Hope,” he’d echoed helplessly.

  I thought you were going to take care of us. She’d almost shouted it. She’d swallowed the awful impulse just in time. It wasn’t his fault. None of it was. He’d done his best, tried to help.

  She knew now that it wasn’t the first time he had.

  She’d asked her father what Guy had meant before, back in the corridor when he’d spoken to her and Luke. We don’t want a repeat of … She hadn’t immediately remembered to do it. When Richard had found her in the hospital porch, after Luke had disappeared up the sodden driveway, he’d folded her in a tight embrace, restraining her from running after him (it won’t help, it won’t), and she’d sobbed, too consumed by sadness to think of anything else. But later, drained of tears, as she’d sat with Richard by Alice’s bed, watching her mother’s breaths go in, out, Guy’s strange words had returned to her.

  Her father hadn’t seemed surprised when she’d spoken of them. He’d simply continued staring down at Alice, sighing, as though he’d already been thinking of what had happened himself.

  He hadn’t told her very much. More than he ever had before, though, shocking her with the revelation that her mother had had to have a surgery on the voyage home to India, after that one time she’d visited Maddy in England. “It was … horrendous,” he’d said, eyes distant, reliving it. “She was in hospital when we got back here, for a long time. This hospital. Guy was a very junior doctor then, but he helped her.”

  “What was the surgery for?” Maddy had asked.

  He’d shaken his head. I’ve given her my word it won’t come from me. “Ask your mama,” he’d said, “once she’s better. Make her tell you.”

  “I can’t make her.”

  “Of course you can,” he’d said. “Darling, she’d give you the moon if she could.”

  She thought about those words now, as she stroked her mother’s hand. She hadn’t held her hand in such a long time.

  “Where’s your papa?” Della asked.

  “At the office,” Maddy said, “telling them he won’t be in for a while.” Her voice shook. “He’s asking Fraser Keaton to cancel my ticket.”

  “Oh,” said Della, moving round the bed, “come here.”

  Maddy did just that, fe
eling her friend’s arms come around her, beyond grateful for the comfort, needing it, trying so very hard not to think of how it would be to sink into those other arms, arms now at sea, hugging the coast to Karachi, then crying again anyway, because she hadn’t slept in nearly two days, and she had nothing left in her to fight it.

  “I’m not going to sail until you do,” said Della. “I don’t know if that helps.”

  Maddy tightened her hold. “Of course it helps,” she said.

  * * *

  He’s asking Fraser Keaton to cancel my ticket.

  Alice heard Madeline say it, felt her daughter’s sadness, her awful disappointment, and raised her hand, reaching for hers, wanting to grasp those fingers again, fingers that had used to slip so effortlessly into her own (every day, every, single, day), but found only humid air.

  Don’t cry, she tried to say to Madeline. Please, don’t cry anymore.

  Was she listening?

  Was anyone listening?

  It didn’t seem like anyone was. Madeline was talking to Della. Something about Della coming to stay at the villa. That would be nice. The house had always felt too empty, too quiet, its rooms missing several heartbeats: Madeline’s, for too many years; all those babies’.

  Stop, she told herself, don’t.

  She couldn’t help herself. It was being in this hospital again. She’d never thought to come back, but now that she had, and her senses were filled by the scent of disinfectant, sickness, and sweat, the metallic trundle of the trolleys, the nurses’ voices, the sticky heat of the rubber sheet lining her bed, she could think of nothing but what had brought her the last time. The little boy she’d almost believed she could grow into life, but that the ship’s surgeon had told her was yet again coming too early, and the wrong way. You’re going to have a little sleep now, Mrs. Bright. When you wake, it will all be fine. They’d used chloroform then, too. She’d forgotten the taste of it. Such an awful taste.