Meet Me in Bombay

by Jenny Ashcroft

  “Are you still on morphia?” Della asked.

  “No,” said Maddy. “I stopped that a long time ago.”

  “It’ll just be jitters then,” said Della. “Don’t overthink it. You always think too much.”

  Did she?

  She tried to stop.

  But invitations were sent out to more than three hundred people, the viceroy included, and she couldn’t help but wonder why she wasn’t more perturbed by the vast number, the prospect of saying her vows in front of all of them.

  “It’s almost like someone else is going to be doing it for me,” she said to Peter, laughing, trying to make light.

  “They’re not,” he said, not laughing even a bit. Rather, frowning. Worriedly. “If you’re having second thoughts, now would be a good time to say.”

  “I’m not,” she said, “of course I’m not.”

  And she wasn’t. She’d decided. She was going to be happy.

  With that in mind, she forced herself to do what she’d been putting off, and wrote to Luke’s parents about the marriage.

  I hope you know how difficult this has been for me, and that no one will ever take the place of your son. I’m so very, very sorry we won’t be making our trip to see you this year. She stared at those words, her own sloping handwriting, thinking particularly of how Nina would feel when she read them, and waited for the urge to weep to overcome her.

  But nothing came.

  It was so odd.

  “Good, odd, I think,” said her father, who drove her to the GPO on a warm, sunny late January morning so that she could post the letter in person.

  “Very good,” she said, and was sure that must be right.

  “I’d be worried if you’d cried,” he went on, overtaking a rickshaw. “I haven’t heard you cry in a while.”

  “I haven’t been doing it,” she said.

  “That’s what I’d hoped,” he said, a smile creasing his weathered face. “Your mother’s told me I should listen to her more often.”

  “I’m sure she has,” said Maddy, and made herself smile, too.

  At the start of February, she finally had her sweaty, itchy cast removed, which was a relief beyond relief. Although her ankle was weak, it didn’t hurt so much anymore, and she gradually learned to walk more easily on it. It still wobbled, though, especially when she had her dress fittings at Watson’s (not the Taj, where she’d gone for her fittings when she’d married Luke, obviously). As she watched her intricate drop-waist gown taking shape, she felt so disorientated by her own detachedness that it was all she could do to keep standing.

  She struggled even more when, on her thirtieth birthday, Guy surprised her by giving her a motorcar: a silver saloon that sparkled in the sunshine, and was incredible and generous, and far, far too much.

  “Of course it’s not,” he told her, pulling her into an embrace (which she was at least learning to get used to). “I’ll teach you to drive.” He kissed her (again, it was becoming more familiar). “If you will keep insisting on going out alone,” he said, his lips moving to her ear, “at least this way I know you won’t be on the trams.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with the trams,” she said, closing her eyes, because she truly did want to enjoy his touch.

  She agreed to let him take her out that evening. It was all part of being happy. (“Very good,” said Della.) They went to one of the jazz-and-oyster suppers the Taj had started to put on each week, in the plush, very hot dining room next to the ballroom the reception was to be in. It was packed; half of Bombay seemed to be there, smoking and dancing and coming by their table to go on and on about their shock that Maddy was out and about after dark.

  “Leave her alone, please,” said Guy in the end, smiling, but with a steeliness to his voice that reminded Maddy that as well as being gentle and warm, he was also a senior-ranking member of the Indian Army’s medical corps. “I’d rather like her to do it twice, and she won’t if you don’t let her enjoy it.”

  “You don’t need to make enemies on my account,” Maddy told him once they were by themselves again (touched as she was that he was ready to).

  “No risk of enemies,” he said, “they’re all too eager to come to the wedding to be offended. Besides,” he took her hand, “all I care about is you.”

  That was the first time that she kissed him. She moved impulsively, leaning across the table to press her lips to his. There were still no shivers; there wasn’t much at all. But, as she pulled away, and saw how his eyes had filled with joy—and yes, relief, too—she swore to herself that she’d kiss him more often.

  The waiter brought their silver platter of oysters. The jazz band played on, and the ceiling punkahs wafted sticky air. For once, they didn’t speak about the wedding. They drank nice wine, quite a lot of it, and talked of all the things they’d used to talk of: his work, her work, how of course he’d support her carrying on with her teaching, just as soon as her ankle was up to her standing on it all day again, but would she consider stopping smoking? He had a theory it might be bad for one’s health.

  “Well, if that’s your theory,” she said, stubbing out her cigarette, smiling with an ease she’d almost forgotten it was possible to feel with him, thinking she should perhaps drink wine more often.

  “Said no truly content person ever,” said Peter, when she met him for coffee the next morning. “How’s your head?”

  “Fine,” she said, even though it was horribly sore and clammy beneath her cloche hat.

  “Maddy,” he said carefully. “The viceroy will be leaving Delhi in less than a week.”

  “I know that.”

  “Once he’s here, it will be too—”

  “Peter,” she said, snapping more than she meant to. (Her head.) “I want to marry Guy.”

  “And do you still feel like someone else is going to be doing it for you?”

  She stirred her milky coffee and said nothing.

  It was, though, exactly how she still felt.

  At the end of the month, she went with her mother, Della, Iris, and Lucy (also a bridesmaid) to collect their gowns from Watson’s. She tried hers on for a final time, listened to her mother and Della exclaim on how perfect it was, laughed at Iris’s raptures, smiled at Lucy mimicking Iris, and could have been in a play.

  It was the same the week after, when Ahmed and Guy’s bearer moved almost all of her and Iris’s things down the road to Guy’s villa. She stood out on the road amid the screeching insects, watching as the cart disappeared, assuring Iris that yes of course she could come back and see Suya and Cook whenever she wanted, and simply couldn’t reconcile herself to the reality that they were going to be living anywhere but where they’d always lived.

  “Are you sad?” her father asked, once Iris had trotted off with Alice to inspect her new room. “Iris was a baby here, after all.”

  “I’m fine, I think,” she said, and genuinely didn’t know whether it was the truth, or a lie.

  She wasn’t really anything.

  She moved through each day as she’d always moved through her days, but felt … mechanical, like a puppet that some invisible person was operating with unseen strings. She spoke as she should, laughed as she should, and since no one asked if she was all right, or looked at her strangely, she supposed she must have sounded more convincing than she felt. She went out with Guy for another dinner, ate and smiled, and even danced with him. He held her close, the lines in his face she’d seen when he’d first returned to Bombay now faded in his transparent happiness, and really didn’t seem to guess how adrift she was.

  That was good, at least.

  At the start of March, the viceroy arrived in Bombay. They had a huge, formal dinner to welcome him, out on the moonlit lawns of the villa. He twiddled at his mustache, rolled back on his heels, winked at Guy, then kissed her on both cheeks and remarked on what a lucky man his old friend Guy was.

  “It’s me who is the lucky one,” Maddy said, and again had that surreal sense that she was reading from somebody
else’s script.

  It was the next morning, with three days left until the wedding, that she finally started to return to herself. Luke’s mother was the one who brought her back, by replying to her letter. It was only when Maddy saw her envelope on the breakfast table that she realized how much she’d been waiting for it. As she picked it up, she felt for the first time in weeks: relief that Nina had written at all; fear at what she might have said. She sliced through the envelope, and her heart creaked back into action, her hands trembled. As she read the unfathomably generous words inside, her eyes blurred.

  You never need to worry that we think you’ve ever done anything other than love our son. We wish you happiness, from the bottom of our hearts. And hope that you will still visit us one day. You will always have a home here.

  Iris came running out while she was still reading, squealing, “Three more sleeps.”

  Somehow, Maddy folded the letter away and managed to swallow her tears.

  But she stopped feeling so much like a puppet after that. She became quieter, she heard it in herself. She had no appetite for anything.

  “Are you unwell?” asked Cook when she apologized for not finishing another meal.

  “I’m nervous, I think,” she said.

  She was.

  She was petrified.

  She thought maybe she had been ever since she’d agreed to marry Guy, she’d just been so numb with panic, she hadn’t realized.

  She was relieved that everyone else was too busy to notice her sudden silence. Her mother was fortunately caught up with Della in decorating the church, the ballroom. Her father and Peter were wholly consumed with escorting the viceroy around town; visiting all the cantonments, having lunches and receptions at various clubs and offices, keeping the senior Indian businessmen in the city onside. Guy was at the hospital, working extra hours in theater before their two-day honeymoon, and Iris was frankly too excited to think of anything beyond the cakes she’d been promised, her new bedroom, and whether she or Lucy would hold Maddy’s train.

  By a force of will, Maddy held her nerve, wading through each baking day and endless night minute by minute; bathing, dressing, listening to Iris, trying to sleep. She almost made it all the way to the wedding itself, certain that if she could just get through the ceremony, everything would be fine.

  She was so close to managing it.

  Then, the night before, with everyone else in bed, she started to pack for the honeymoon, folding her overnight things into a case so that Ahmed could take it to the Taj suite Guy had reserved. Her shutters were ajar, letting the night noises of the jungle in: cicadas, the whispering leaves, the distant ripple of the sea.

  She pulled her stockings from her drawer, the sheer silk catching the golden glow of the lamp, and out of nowhere the thought came to her: Guy will see these.

  Brow creasing, she tried to shake the alarming prospect away.

  But then she took out her negligee, and there it was again: that voice telling her, He’ll see this, too.

  This time, she couldn’t ignore her unease. She clutched the barely there item, and imagined him touching it, taking it off. Before she knew what was happening, that was all she could think about. Her mind, so blissfully detached just a few days before, filled with the terrifying inevitability that she would be naked with Guy. Guy. The two of them would do what she and Luke had done. Tomorrow.

  She placed her hand to her throat. Tomorrow.

  They were going to do that every night for the rest of their lives.

  Every. Single. Night.

  “Oh my God,” she said. “Oh my God…”

  She couldn’t breathe. She really couldn’t breathe.

  Abandoning her packing, she ran from her room, as quickly as her weak ankle would allow. Stopping only to check that Iris’s ayah was with her, she raced down the stairs out onto the driveway before her parents could hear her and stop her, see her fear. She climbed into the motor she was still learning to drive, clunked it into gear, and, scattering gravel, roared down the driveway, to the only place she could think of to go, not stopping until she reached Peter’s small house and was standing, sweaty and shaking, at his door, waiting for him to open it.

  He was already in his dressing gown, ready for bed. He pushed his blond hair back in bleary bemusement as he looked out into the night, then, taking the state of her in, blanched and said, “Oh, Christ.”

  “Peter,” she gabbled, “I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t.”

  His eyes widened. “It’s too late, Maddy darling. It’s too late for this.”

  “But…”

  “It’s tomorrow,” he said. “The viceroy is here. Everyone is here. You can’t do this to Guy. It would end him. Your father would never be able to hold his head up. Iris…”

  “Oh God,” she said, throat constricting at Iris’s name, because of course she couldn’t hurt her, or any of them. “Oh God, I’m so stupid.…”

  He didn’t correct her. But he opened his arms and hugged her for a long time, telling her that it was all going to be all right, it was.

  “You had so many reasons for marrying him,” he said, still holding her close, “let’s talk about those.”

  So they did.

  They sat up all night, smoking too many cigarettes, drinking bracing tumblers of brandy, and spoke endlessly of Guy’s kindness, his goodness, how lucky Iris was to be getting him, how cherished she’d be.

  “How cherished you’ll both be,” said Peter.

  “Yes,” she said, sipping more brandy, “yes.”

  Slowly, steadily, forced to remember all the many admirable things about Guy, not least the perfect papa he was going to make, she felt her alarm over the prospect of going to bed with him (and their entire lifetime together) retreat.

  Or maybe it was just her exhaustion muffling her panic. The brandy, too.

  She didn’t question it. It really was too late to go back—she’d known that in her heart even before Peter had pointed it out; it was why she’d been so beside herself—and she would take whatever help possible to move forward.

  “Good girl,” said Peter, far from easily, as he saw her off at dawn. “I’m always, always here.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “You’ll be fine,” he said, trying to sound convinced.

  “I’ll be fine,” she agreed, doing an even worse job.

  But she let Peter hail her a rickshaw, since she’d had too much brandy and not enough sleep to drive straight. She returned to the villa, where no one had even realized she’d been gone, and was back in her bed before Iris woke and ran in proclaiming, “It’s today, it’s today.”

  At nine, the telegraph boy delivered a wire from Edie (HAVE THE MOST WONDERFUL DAY STOP I FEEL SURE THIS IS THE VERY BEST THING FOR YOU ALL STOP) and another from Luke’s parents (THINKING OF YOU BOTH STOP). At ten, she removed Luke’s rings from around her neck, dressed as a bride for the second time in her life, set off for church in sunshine instead of rain, and at eleven walked down the aisle on her father’s arm. Then, in front of more than three hundred people, the viceroy included, she promised a man she’d realized too late that she should never, ever have said yes to that she’d love, honor, and obey him. As he smiled across at her, so smart and proper in his uniform, not teasing, not even a bit (I might almost be deceived…), she swore to herself that she’d at the very least honor him, and try to make him as happy as he wanted to make her.

  The reception passed in a blur, a haze. They sat for more photographs, sipped champagne, smiled and thanked endless lines of guests for coming, and then it was over, and it was dark, and she was holding Guy’s hand, and they were climbing the Taj’s grand marble staircase toward their room.

  “Thank you,” he said to her, when he led her through the door, over the threshold, toward the large, four-poster bed. “Thank you for giving me the best day of my life.”

  “You’re very welcome,” she said, which was a ridiculous thing to say, but she’d been awake for more than
twenty-four hours, could hardly breathe for the consuming fear at what they were about to do, and really couldn’t think of anything better.

  “Are you nervous?” he asked softly.

  I’m terrified, she wanted to scream. Can we please not?

  “A little,” she said.

  “You don’t need to be,” he said. “Please don’t be.” He leaned down, kissing her neck, her collarbone, reaching to unbutton the clasps on her gown. “I love you so.”

  He didn’t rush her. He took her gown off, then sat her on the bed, rolling her stockings from her legs as though she were the most breakable of china dolls. He unlaced her stays, kissing her chest, running his hands down her waist, around her thighs, and was slow, and gentle, and so very kind.

  But all she could think about as he moved on top of her was her fits of laughter as Luke had thrown both of them into the sea that night. All she felt, as Guy’s weight pressed her down into the soft, luxurious mattress, was the memory of her excitement, her urgency, as she and Luke had dragged their sodden clothes from one another, making love again, and then again in that tiny, perfect boat.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  King’s Fifth Military Convalescent Hospital, 1921

  “Diana’s written,” said Arnold, from Jones’s bedroom door. “She said she’d prefer not to visit, because of Ernest.”

  Jones, sitting at his desk, looked up, staring. He’d been waiting so long for this, pinning everything onto it, and now that it was finally happening he was filled with fear.

  “What did she say?” he asked, forcing the words from his too-tight throat.

  Arnold dipped his white head, studying the letter in his hand, brow denting behind his spectacles. There appeared to be a newspaper clipping folded in the envelope, too. It struck Jones as odd that Arnold didn’t simply hand both to him to read. Was he concealing something?