Meet Me in Bombay

by Jenny Ashcroft

  Before he could ask, Arnold said, “Does the name Maddy Bright mean anything to you?”

  Jones sat very still, clipping forgotten, waiting for the name to do just that.

  Maddy, he repeated silently.

  Maddy Bright.

  He shook his head slowly, chill resignation seeping through him.

  It didn’t mean anything.

  Nor did the name Luke Devereaux.

  Not straightaway.

  Crushed by disappointment, he refused to listen to Arnold telling him that he needed to give it time. “This isn’t the end,” Arnold said, folding the letter and clipping away without having shown Jones either.

  Jones made no reply. It felt like the end.

  He declined Arnold’s invitation to go with him to his study and talk it all out. When Sister Lytton arrived in Jones’s room, cocoa in hand, he sent her away, too. Unable to be where other people would ask him to summon a brave face he couldn’t bear to affect, he pulled on boots and a jacket and went out to the forest, breathing fog in the cold March air, beating the trees with a stick, sending leaves scattering. He didn’t know how far he walked, but as early spring darkness descended, his energy drained from him; he sank to sitting on the mossy floor, head back against a trunk, and sobbed like a child—for himself, his wife and daughter, his parents, all they’d lost and all he’d lost—overcome by the hopelessness of these years he’d spent trying to find them, ready now, really ready, to finally give it all up.

  He was still ready when he returned to the King’s Fifth.

  You remember what you once suggested, he even thought of saying to Sister Lytton. Well, I’m ready to start again, be happy enough. I’m tired of this place. I am so very tired.…

  He was exhausted. He avoided the dining room, where he could hear dinner taking place, and, before he could say anything he might regret to Sister Lytton, went straight to his room, his bed, falling swiftly to sleep.

  And then, he dreamed.

  He was in the middle of trees once more, not a cold English forest, but an Indian jungle.

  He was in India.

  He stood at a gate, looking down a driveway toward a grand villa with bougainvillea climbing its walls. Peacocks strutted on the lawns, palms swayed. There was a porch, and on that porch’s steps sat a woman. She was bathed in sunshine; her blond hair and cream cheekbones were shaded by her hat.

  In his unconsciousness, he watched her. It came to him that he was waiting for her to look up, notice him.

  For once, he didn’t wake before she did.

  She raised her face to his. He saw, even from a distance, how her face broke into a smile.

  It did something to him, her smile.

  It gave him everything.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  High Elms Residential Home, England, December 1975

  He never wanted to forget the joy of that moment. The sheer, unmitigated euphoria of finding her, finding everything, all over again. As he sat by one of the home’s bay windows, looking out through the steamy panes, over frosted lawns, he felt a constriction in his chest, a burn of such pain and sadness, replaying his own excitement, the hope that had coursed through his entire being.

  His desperate impatience to get back to her.

  But even as he sat there, his mind began to blur. Confusion thickened it. His breath quickened; that familiar struggle to cling to lucidity.

  Within seconds, he’d forgotten he was struggling to hold on to anything at all.

  He stared at the window.

  He couldn’t recall sitting next to it. The shape of his reflection looked back at him: hair that was thick, shoulders that were broad, but lower than they’d once been, frailer.

  He’d become so old.

  From somewhere in the house, he could smell the scent of a baking fruitcake. On the radio, turned low, classical music played. The living room was barely full. A couple played chess in the upholstered armchairs by the fire. Beside them, a woman and her daughter ate scones and drank tea.

  He wasn’t alone either. There was an elderly woman sitting, just beside him. She was peering at him, anxiously. Mutely, he looked her over, trying to devise who she was. He tried not to let her see his confusion, sensing she might be hurt—she was, after all, dressed as though she’d gone to some effort: a powder-blue jacket and matching skirt, a pillbox hat placed on her white hair—but from her creased brow, the gentle way she reached for his hand, he supposed he didn’t do a very good job.

  “Are you lost again?” she said.

  “Lost?” he said.

  “In Bombay,” she said.

  He frowned. Bombay?

  “Don’t worry.” She held his hand tighter. “I’m here,” she said. “I’ll help you.” Her eyes shone, with happiness or grief he couldn’t quite make out. “I’m here,” she repeated.

  He felt as though he should trust her.

  It would be a comfort, in fact, to do that.

  “You’ll help?” he said.

  “Yes,” she said, patting his hand. “But shall we have a cocoa first?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Bombay, 1921

  After they went to bed on their wedding night, Maddy couldn’t sleep, despite her exhaustion. She lay awake until dawn, gritty-eyed and tense by Guy’s sated side, listening to the sounds coming through the walls from the hotel’s other bedrooms: the creaking pipes and flushing latrines, the coughs and indiscernible voices of strangers. She wanted to go to the latrine herself, but felt too awkward to do that in case she should wake Guy, then full of panic again, because how could she have married a man she couldn’t even bring herself to visit the bathroom in front of? She really didn’t know, but eventually, as the rising sun tinged the edge of the window shutters with light, she got up, too desperate not to, and crept across the room to the water closet, wincing, sore in a way she’d never been with Luke, not even on her first time. She was as quiet as she possibly could be as she emptied her bladder, then washed her hands, her face, but when she returned to the room again, he was awake, smiling dozily from the bed.

  “Come here,” he said, sitting up, opening his arms to her. The skin on his torso was much paler than it was on his arms, his neck and face. Luke’s had been the same color all over; that light tan he’d got from swimming every day.

  Would she ever stop comparing Guy to Luke?

  “Maddy?” Guy said, expression becoming concerned. “You look upset. Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” she said, “it’s just … I’ve got the curse.” The lie was out before she knew it was coming. She blushed, more at the intimacy of the admission than her dishonesty.

  He wasn’t embarrassed. He was a doctor, after all. “Oh, dearest,” he said (that word again), “you poor thing. Come and lie down.”

  She went. What else was there for her to do?

  He drew her to him, wrapping his arms around her waist, kissing her neck. It was hot, too hot. She started to perspire beneath her nightdress.

  “Maybe next month it won’t come,” he said softly.

  “Maybe,” she said, and didn’t mention that she’d been to see Dr. Tully and asked him for a contraceptive device. As good a wife as she had decided to be—every bit the one Guy deserved—she wasn’t ready for a baby with him. Not yet.

  He kissed her again, whispering to her that it was still early, she should get some rest before they drove back to the villa, and she closed her eyes, gratefully pretending to fall asleep.

  * * *

  She pretended a great deal in the days and then weeks that followed. She had to. She never knew the (retrospectively blissful) detachedness of being a puppet again. She and Iris moved into Guy’s villa, settled into their new rooms with their new paint, and new furniture, and newly polished floorboards, and Iris took to it all like a duckling to water—curling up with Guy for bedtime stories, wriggling into Maddy’s bed each morning, just as she always had—and Guy came to and from the hospital with a permanent bounce in his step, which Maddy did h
er best to replicate, feeling a constant, prickling terror that if she didn’t watch her every word and expression she might slip and betray to one or both of them just how very much the opposite of happy she’d become.

  When, after her invented monthly had finished, Guy knocked on the door that joined their rooms and asked if he might, she told herself that it was now or never, try harder, then forced a nod, and made herself breathe as he sat down beside her, pulling her nightgown over her head.

  “You’re so perfect,” he said, kissing her shoulder, pushing her gently so that she was lying down, “too perfect. I can’t believe I get to do this.”

  She closed her eyes, trying not to wince as he moved into her, and couldn’t quite believe it either.

  It was harder than ever to feel at ease around him, now that their nights were filled with such painful intimacy, and the deceit of her contraception. She hated herself for having to fib again when she did get her curse, saying it sometimes came as quickly as every two weeks, even more when he became anxious about her and asked her to see Dr. Tully just in case something was wrong.

  “I don’t want you to worry, though,” he said, cupping her face in his hand. “I’m sure it will turn out to be nothing.”

  “Yes,” she said, feeling an utter heel. “So am I.”

  Resolved to find more to occupy herself, she decided to return to the school, even though Guy was still worried about her spending too much time on her ankle, overexerting herself.

  “We’ve only just had the wedding,” he said. “You need to recover.”

  “From what?” she said. “Della and Mama did all the work.”

  “But you seem tired,” he said. “Rest a while longer. Go to the club, have a long lunch with Della. Get to know some of the wives from the hospital.”

  She raised a brow at that. “Guy,” she said, “you didn’t marry that person.”

  He smiled, then sighed, in a resigned way that made her wonder if he’d started to think it might have been easier if he had.

  He didn’t protest further, though. He asked only that she drive rather than walk to the schoolhouse, and she promised she would, but it was another lie; she enjoyed the short leafy walk down through the birdsong and sweet muggy heat too much to avoid it.

  And she loved being back with the children. So did Iris, who ran to reclaim her spot next to Suya the moment they both ducked into the low-ceilinged classroom. The others all came rushing to Maddy, and she hugged them in turn, laughing at their delight, the feel of their enthusiastic arms around her neck, then clapped her hands and said they should get to it. For the mornings that she taught them—drilling them in arithmetic, singing songs, writing stories, even bringing her mother down to paint—she forgot her nights, her worry. She lost that awful sense that she’d strayed into someone else’s life.

  But it returned the instant she was in Guy’s villa again, shoulders dropping as she and Iris walked into its shadowy hallway, the large, dark rooms with their unfamiliar walls. She felt awful about it. Guy had been nothing but welcoming (all that new furniture, the fresh paint). She resolved to do something for him. He’d spoken about having his senior officers over for a dinner party, saying they were all eager to see Maddy again, and besides, they’d had him over so many times as a bachelor, he owed them. Although she really wasn’t that person—the type to happily lose hours on table decorations and seating plans—she was also deadeningly aware that it would cause problems for Guy if she didn’t eventually start to entertain.

  Easing herself in gently, she invited her parents, Peter, and Della and Jeff, for Sunday lunch. Unfortunately, she failed to ask Guy’s bearer what he thought of the plan, and told him about it instead, only realizing this was a mistake when his eyes turned to stone. He refused to discuss the menu and marketing with her, assuring her—with an air even more wounded than Cook’s had been when she’d offered to help with his Victoria sponge all those years before—that he was well able to run the villa himself, he’d been doing such work for almost longer than she’d been alive, memsahib. Maddy wasn’t about to go into battle with him—truly, he was welcome to the running of everything—but did ask that he at least ensure the meat was fresh, since she and Iris had been unwell a couple of times since moving in. Oh, his face. She was sure it was in punishment for her interference that he procured the stringiest chicken she’d ever tasted and, despite the more than one-hundred-degree April heat (even in the shade of the garden’s trees where they were to eat), instructed Guy’s cook to make lumpy gravy, boiled carrots, and horribly dry roast potatoes to accompany it. No one could eat the meal, not even Guy (who quietly assured her that she really didn’t need to bother herself with the domestic side of things in future, the staff were more than capable); they all sweated in the hammering sunshine and picked at the congealing food, setting Maddy’s teeth on edge, until Della and Jeff’s youngest, Emily, pronounced it horrible, then threw her plate on the grass and, displaying none of her father’s sunny tendencies, leaned over and sank her teeth into her sister’s unsuspecting arm. It was as Lucy was screaming, inconsolable, and Emily was being carted home in disgrace by Jeff, that the hospital rang for Guy on the telephone he’d had installed, calling him to operate as the surgeon on duty had fallen ill with typhus. As he went, he kissed Maddy goodbye, and it was so public that she tensed in a way she never normally let herself do anymore, moving so that he kissed her clammy cheek and not her lips, then winced, feeling him balk, even more so when she looked around and saw, from the strained way that everyone was suddenly shuffling their napkins, that they’d all noticed the awkward exchange.

  “I’m so sorry,” Maddy said to Guy, running to catch him as he walked back to the villa. She squinted up at him. “I was just so upset about the meal.”

  “Of course,” he said, relieved, she felt, to be given an excuse.

  “I’m no good as a hostess,” she said.

  “You’ll get better,” he said, smiling in his kind way, but not correcting her, because he did after all need her to improve. He glanced over her shoulder. “You should get back to the table,” he said. “They’re all looking.” He kissed her again. This time she remembered to let him do it. “Don’t wait up for me tonight. If it’s late, I’ll stay at the hospital.”

  “All right,” she said, relieved herself, then feeling guilty, too, for being relieved.

  She returned to the table, braced for the inevitable inquiries as to whether all was well. She assured everyone that it was, the chicken had just made her feel a little sick, and naturally no one took issue with that.

  She could tell, though, that they all thought there was more to it. Her father, so mercifully convinced of her well-being throughout her engagement, was once again studying her with concern. Peter, refilling his wineglass, looked rather green. (She wondered if he was thinking of how he’d talked her out of her panic the night before the wedding. “Yes,” he said to her later, “it crossed my mind.”) Even her mother and Della appeared anxious.

  “Is being back at the school too much?” her mother asked. “You’ve lost weight.”

  “You have,” said Della. “And you seem flat. You were so excited before the wedding.”

  I had strings, Maddy almost said, but stopped herself.

  “Is it the anticlimax?” Della went on. “I’ve heard that can happen.”

  “Maybe,” said Maddy, seizing on that, “probably.” Then, conscious of Iris still and silent beside her, patently listening, she asked if anyone was ready to brave dessert.

  “No,” they all chorused, hands held up, “no thank you,” making her laugh, in spite of their worry.

  Loath to risk making it any worse, for the rest of the afternoon she made sure to laugh often, talk more, be happy, and was grateful when they in turn seemed to relax again. After Lucy and Iris had run off to play, she even found herself suggesting a birthday party for Iris, who was turning six in just under a fortnight, on the middle Saturday of the month.

  “We could make it a surpri
se,” she said, “back at the villa.” She looked to her parents. “If that would be all right with you?”

  “It would be a delight,” said her father.

  “A pleasure,” said her mother.

  “Can we not invite Diana and the new husband, though?” said Peter.

  “Diana’s back?” said Maddy.

  “Only just,” said Peter, “with Alfred, or Alf as we’re to call him.” He grimaced. “He came by the office on Friday.” He swilled his wine. “Alf is awful.”

  “Alf makes me miss Ernest,” said Richard with a sigh. “Poor Ernest.”

  “Have you seen Diana?” said Maddy to her mother.

  “Not yet,” said Alice, strangely tight-lipped. “I’m in no rush to.”

  “Remind me again why I had to hire her husband?” said Richard.

  “It just seemed right to help,” said Alice, in that same tense way.

  “Well, it’s decided anyway,” said Della. “No Diana and Alf at the party. Iris can thank us when she’s older.”

  “Fine,” said Maddy, “we’ll keep it small. I’ll get the children from the school along. She’ll love that.”

  She would have, Maddy was sure, if that was how it had been allowed to work out.

  But Guy, who returned exhausted from the hospital the following morning, proclaimed the party a wonderful idea, and wondered if it wouldn’t be the perfect excuse to finally invite all of his colleagues over. So many of them had families of their own, he said, and Iris could make some more friends who were, well, who were … like her.

  “British, you mean,” said Maddy.

  “Yes, dearest heart,” he said, with a weary smile. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  There didn’t feel much right about it either, but since he looked so very tired (and she still felt horrible about the way she’d avoided his kiss), she gave in, and tried not to betray her dismay when he presented her with a list of names as long as her arm.