Meet Me in Bombay

by Jenny Ashcroft

  “I’m meant to have given up,” she whispered to their daughter. “I don’t know how to do that.”

  Iris, finding some unfathomable humor in her words, laughed.

  “Heartless,” said Maddy, kissing her. “Quite heartless.”

  It was Christmas Eve. Tomorrow would be Iris’s first Christmas, and despite Maddy’s promises to her parents, to Della and Peter—who’d thankfully evaded the torpedoes and arrived safely back in September, working again in his old job, staying in the villa, too, since they had plenty of room and no one could stand to think of him by himself—she kept fantasizing that a message would arrive from Luke saying that he was alive after all, on his way back to them. Better yet, that he’d appear on the veranda, hands in his pockets, handsome face turned toward them in the garden. Did you really think I would miss another Christmas? Maddy looked toward the veranda, just in case.…

  But no. He wasn’t there.

  He never was.

  The last letters she’d sent to him at the front had been returned to her; the envelopes containing her descriptions of Iris’s every smile and mood and gurgle had been unopened, heartlessly marked: Killed in Action. She’d thrown them out, hating them. And she’d finally stopped trying to find someone who’d admit he might be alive. Not because she believed it was hopeless to try, but because she’d run out of people to write to. (“Thank God,” she’d overheard her father say to her mother before dinner one night, and had only just restrained herself from going into their dressing room, telling them both how much their words hurt. Just let me believe, why can’t you?) The letters had got her nowhere anyway. Luke’s CO had been the first to crush her, replying to her entreaties that he admitted there could have been a mistake with softly worded assurances that there absolutely hadn’t been, hideous advice that she move on with her life. I wouldn’t want my wife to waste hers waiting for me. Enraged, she’d thrown that letter away.

  She hadn’t been able to do that with the reply from Luke’s old contact at General Staff, though, because he hadn’t sent one. Nor had his superior. Or his superior’s superior.

  “Won’t you pull some strings?” Maddy had implored her father.

  “Darling,” he’d said softly, “the strings you need don’t exist.”

  The secretaries at all the base hospitals had at least responded to her, but with form letters saying there were simply too many injured men for them to address relatives on a case-by-case basis. Please accept our sincere condolences. It was the same with the secretaries in London. If Maddy had only been in England, she’d have visited the wards herself, but the U-boats were still at large and she was as unwilling as she’d ever been to expose Iris to the danger. Edie had refused point-blank to carry out the inquiries for her (I don’t want to give you false hope, sweetheart, I agree with your father on that) and now Maddy didn’t know what else to do.

  “Let it lie, darling Maddy,” Peter had said, when he’d first returned, pale, quiet, and far too thin.

  They’d been walking in the garden, just the two of them, braving the last of the monsoon rains. Della had been out for a Sunday luncheon with Jeff, whose services thankfully hadn’t been requested by the expeditionary force—“Teeth are the least of their worries,” said Peter—and Maddy’s parents had been minding Iris inside.

  “I can’t let it lie,” Maddy had said. “I just can’t.”

  “But you have to,” Peter had said. He’d stopped, standing crookedly on his prosthetic leg beneath his umbrella, white face pinched with pain. “He’s gone. I’m so sorry.…”

  “What if he’s like Ernest Aldyce?” she’d said, interrupting. “What if he’s forgotten, and is waiting for me to—”

  “He’s not waiting for anything,” Peter had said, in a quiet voice that had made it almost impossible not to weep. He’d gone on, reminding her that he’d been to see Ernest at the end of August. Luke hadn’t been with him. “I even asked the goddamn nurse if she’d seen anyone like him.”

  She’d seized on that. “Then you think he could be alive, too.…”

  “No. No.” Peter had turned his face to the pouring sky, fragile jaw clenched. “I just … want to. I miss him. Every day. And I feel so guilty that I’m here, and he’s not. The nurse said people write all the time, hundreds of letters every month, asking after people they can’t let go.”

  “But…”

  “No.” He’d almost shouted it. “No buts.” He’d reached out to her with his free hand. She’d tried to pull away, scared to let him touch her, lest he start to convince her. He’d taken her fingers anyway. “I was there, Maddy.”

  “Did you see him dead?” she’d asked, and to her horror really had started crying then. “Did you actually see him?”

  “I saw it all,” Peter had said, tears falling, too. “Don’t make me tell you what I saw.…”

  “What?” she’d said, the words breaking from her against her will. “What did you see?”

  “I saw him die.”

  “No,” she’d said, and even as she had, she’d seen Luke herself, not in uniform, not in France, but in a linen jacket on the promenade, in evening dress at the Gymkhana Club, opposite her in that rooftop restaurant, at the front of St. Thomas’s Cathedral, holding her in the sea.…

  “He was blasted up into the air,” Peter had said, slicing through her memories, hand still clutching hers. “Maddy, you have to trust me.”

  “That’s not the same as dying,” she’d tried to reply, but she hadn’t been able to, because she’d been sobbing too much.

  “They found him,” Peter had said, “buried him, with the photograph of you and Iris on his chest. He has a grave,” and she’d cried, cried and cried, and he’d thrown their umbrellas to the floor and hugged her, both of them becoming soaked until Alice had run down from the villa, soaked herself, insisting that they both come back inside. “This is no good, it’s no good for you.…”

  Everyone had assumed after that that she’d accepted Luke was dead. She’d let them, because in the end it felt kinder not to have them remind her constantly that she needed to do it.

  She cried more now. She did it most nights, after Iris had gone to bed and couldn’t hear her (she never let her hear, terrified that the sadness might somehow blight the happy innocence of her existence); she cried because although she still couldn’t believe he was where everyone said he was, he wasn’t with her either, and she missed him. She missed him so much.

  “I need him,” she murmured under her breath.

  This time Iris didn’t laugh. She reached up, dropping Maddy’s lace collar, placing her chubby hand against her cheek, lips to her lips, drooling a kiss.

  “Oh, that’s lovely,” said Maddy. “Thank you.” More drool. “Iris, thank you. Aren’t I so lucky that I have you?”

  * * *

  “You have more than just Iris,” her mother said to her, much later that night, as, with Iris fast asleep in the nursery, they worked by flickering lamplight in the drawing room, wrapping the rattles and stacking blocks and new stuffed animals they’d scoured Bombay’s small handful of toy shops to find, ready to nestle, waiting for the morning, beneath the banana-branch Christmas tree. Della was out, at the Gymkhana Club’s Christmas Eve do with Jeff. Peter and Richard were having nightcaps on the veranda. “You’re not alone, Madeline,” Alice went on softly. She left the ribbon she’d been tying and looked across at Maddy, her blue gaze bright in the lamps’ glow. “You’re surrounded by people who … care … so very much.”

  “I know I am,” said Maddy quietly, feeling her eyes prick, because of course she knew, and was endlessly grateful for it, but it still meant so much to hear her mother say it, to see the love in her face; a love she still, after all this time, couldn’t quite take for granted.

  “I want you to … smile, this Christmas,” said Alice. “I want to know how to help you do that.”

  “I’ll be fine,” said Maddy.

  “Oh, Madeline…”

  “I will,” said Maddy. “So l
ong as Iris enjoys herself. That’s what matters.…”

  “No,” said Alice. “Not just that.”

  “Mama—”

  “No,” Alice said again. She reached out, taking Maddy’s hand. “You’re my Iris,” she said, squeezing her fingers. “You matter, too.”

  * * *

  Saddened by her mother’s words, her worry, Maddy did try to smile more that Christmas. She did it for everyone. Moved by the effort they all put into making the day jolly—the stocking her parents left hidden at the foot of her bed, full of books, bath salts, and imported (not-too-melted) Cadbury’s chocolates; the noisy merriment Peter, Della, and Jeff determinedly filled each hour with, fussing over Iris, cramming into the motor to go to church, eating Cook’s (vegetarian) feast on the veranda, wearing Richard’s paper hats—she did her best to play along. She was acutely conscious of being far from the only one who’d suffered that year (poor Peter, Fraser, Ernest…), and was loath to act as though she was. If Peter, with his lost leg, and all his grief, could throw himself into the festivities, surely she could summon the odd smile, too.

  But it was so very hard. Try as she might to remain present in the day, her thoughts kept wandering—to wintry European wards, a proper Christmas fir in an unknown hospital; a bed he lay in, waiting for her to find him—and too often she’d realize with a start that she’d failed to reply to someone’s question, react to a joke, or pull a cracker. While she exclaimed, like everyone exclaimed, when Iris crawled over to the banana-branch tree and tugged it, sending baubles scattering for what felt like the hundredth time that year (“Oh, Iris,” they all chorused), all she could think about, as she cuddled Iris close, was how much Luke would enjoy seeing this havoc caused by their little adventurer, and how much he was missing of her life. When she sat her on her knee to open the gift his heartbroken parents, Nina and Theo, had sent (Nina and Theo, who’d written weekly, ever since Maddy had been forced to send them that agonizing, impossible-to-word letter of their son’s supposed death), she pulled out the engraved rose-gold locket they’d so carefully parceled up, to our beloved granddaughter, and couldn’t even attempt a smile. It was all she could do not to fall apart.

  “It was all any of us could do,” said Della, once the sun had finally set on the exhausting day, and the two of them were returning from putting Iris down in the nursery. “But since no one else can see you now, could you do with a quick cry before Jeff insists on party games?”

  Maddy felt more able to face the rest of the evening, after that cry. And fortified by the generous brandy Jeff poured her (bracing), she even managed to mime out The Old Curiosity Shop for Peter to guess in charades.

  “I actually got it after ‘old,’” he said, “but it was far too much fun watching you do ‘curiosity’ to say that.”

  Still, she exhaled a long breath of relief when, well before ten, her father suggested they call it a night. She suspected—from the ready agreement of everyone else that yes, it really was getting on—that she wasn’t alone in being glad the merrymaking was over.

  And she didn’t go to the New Year’s ball her father’s office hosted at the Taj, in aid of the war effort. Charitable cause or no, it would have been too hard—far, far too hard—to be where other people were on that night of nights. She wasn’t sure she could stand to hear, let alone see, a firework. So while Della and Jeff went, her parents, too, since they could hardly not, she remained at the villa. Peter stayed home, too, with Richard’s blessing.

  “He’s been through quite enough as it is this year,” said Richard to Maddy. “The two of you can keep each other company. Your mother and I will feel much better about not being here that way.”

  They planned to do nothing more than have dinner on the veranda, and a mandatory glass or two of champagne. For much of the evening, that was exactly what they did. They talked about Luke, endlessly. With the cicadas clacking, the trees whispering, Peter told stories from long before Maddy had even met him: all the tales of polo matches, yacht races, drunken nights, and disciplinary hearings for getting locked out of the cantonment that she could never get enough of. Maddy in turn spoke of Luke’s letters from the front: how often he’d talked of Peter, how much he’d depended on him.

  “It was mutual,” said Peter, “believe me.”

  With the champagne bottle emptying, the balmy night deepening, they reminisced about that Yacht Club party, two years before, laughing as they replayed Della’s indignation over Peter not going home to collect her (what a rotter), and Maddy’s hopeless search for her matches.

  “Do you still have them?” Peter asked.

  “Of course I do,” she said.

  Perhaps it was the champagne, or all the talk of the Yacht Club, but, as midnight approached, Maddy realized that she actually would like to see the fireworks after all.

  “You’re sure?” said Peter.

  “Yes,” she said, “I think so.”

  Stopping only to check on Iris with her ayah, and fetch fresh champagne, they clambered down to the bottom of the hill—slowly, because of Peter’s leg—back to the jungle-fringed beach Maddy had visited so many times with Luke, and which she hadn’t set foot on since he’d gone. She paused as they reached it, hesitating amid the palms, stilled by the memories rushing in. The moonlit sands were exactly as she recalled them. The black, rippling shoreline, heartbreakingly the same.

  “We can go back,” said Peter gently, his pale face taut with concern in the silvery light. “We don’t have to stay.”

  “I want to,” she said, quite truthfully. “I want to be here.”

  She almost felt as though Luke was, too.

  How could she walk away from that? From him?

  Midnight wasn’t far away. They had only time to fill their glasses, and then the fireworks came, exploding above the distant city skyline. They held each other’s hands, watching, neither of them speaking.

  Together, they raised their glasses.

  “To Luke,” said Peter, and tipped his head back, gaze moving directly up, to the heavens hidden behind the starlit sky.

  Maddy didn’t follow his stare. She kept her own eyes fixed on the city, the living pulsing earth, clinging to her silent belief that he was still on it. Awake, she hoped.

  Not too hurt, she prayed.

  Just somewhere safe, somewhere warm. Somewhere breathing.

  Somewhere there.

  * * *

  A good half of the patients stayed up at the King’s Fifth to welcome 1916, but not Ernest, which meant the gramophone could be on, and the nurses were allowed to sing. As they broke into “Auld Lang Syne,” some of the men joined in—the ones who’d begun to put on weight, talk more, jump less, and whom Arnold had said he’d have no choice but to certify fit for active service again soon—but Jones remained silent, not because he didn’t know the words of old acquaintance being forgot, but because he did know them. They coursed through him, and every one of his nerve endings leaped. Images flashed through his mind. He was deaf to Poppy offering him a glass of elderflower wine; blind to Sister Lytton smiling at him curiously. Thinking only of his journal, he turned, ran up the stairs two at a time, and wrote everything down. The lyrics, the sense of heat he’d been struck with, the picture of himself crouching on a mosaic floor (a train station? he wrote), and the slender gloved hand reaching out, touching the back of a terrace chair.

  “This is good,” Arnold said, the next morning. “Very good. This might be our year.”

  But it wasn’t.

  January passed into February. Winter became spring. Spring became the summer. They heard the heavy guns at the Somme, and Jones felt full of despair for the men still over there in the trenches. Exhausted as he was, he struggled with insomnia, his fragmented, meaningless dreams, and when, one morning in September, Poppy came to make his bed—even though he always did it himself—and gave a silly laugh, remarking that she really was going to give him a good scolding one of these days, “and what would you make of that, Officer Jones?,” he snapped, sho
uting that Jones wasn’t his bloody name, and she could scold him as much as she bloody liked.

  He regretted his temper instantly. He’d long had an abhorrence of becoming that kind of patient, and turned, ready to apologize. But when he looked again at Poppy, she didn’t appear remotely chastened, just disconcertingly flushed. Deciding she could probably do with less rather than more attention, he said nothing further at all.

  Later that month, to everyone’s horror, two officers killed themselves in quick succession. One had been about to leave the hospital, back to the trenches.

  “Sister Lytton’s blaming herself,” Arnold said, polishing his glasses that didn’t need polishing, “but I feel it is I who have blood on my hands.”

  “It’s not your fault,” said Jones, and was struck by the certain sense of someone having said something similar to him before.

  “It is,” Arnold said, with a deep sigh. “I’ve sent Sister Lytton away, anyway. A spot of leave…”

  It was while she was gone that Ernest’s absent wife came to the hospital. Jones, who’d been up in his room for most of her visit, oblivious to her presence, only saw her fleetingly, brushing past her on his way into the drawing room as she left it hurriedly with Poppy. He turned, staring after her black hair, her rouged, pointy face, then frowned, wondering what had made him look twice.

  But then he heard Ernest sobbing in his chair. He went straight to him; that familiar urge to protect, console him. He didn’t pay any attention to the way Ernest’s wife glanced back toward Ernest. He was too preoccupied with picking up the pieces she’d left.

  “D-D-Di,” said Ernest.

  “No,” said Jones, “you don’t want to die. There’s been enough of that.”

  Gradually, he deduced that Ernest had been asked by his wife to sign some forms, and that she’d got angry when he couldn’t manage it. He felt angry himself, at Poppy for allowing Ernest’s wife to approach him without Arnold there, and not intervening sooner.