Meet Me in Bombay

by Jenny Ashcroft

  “He was always so sure you’d been killed,” she said.

  “I don’t blame him,” said Luke. “The way he looked when that shell exploded.” His eyes darkened in recollection. “You can’t imagine.” He shook his head. “I wouldn’t want you to.”

  She stared into his face, imagining regardless. “He still should have told me,” she said. “Guy should have told me.”

  “Guy would have seen more death than the rest of us,” said Luke. “Life was what felt impossible out there.”

  “You’re defending him?”

  “I don’t want to,” he said, with an unhappy attempt at a laugh, “believe me. But I don’t think there was anything sinister in him keeping it from you.”

  “And what about Diana?” she said.

  He raised a brow. “We really have to talk about her?”

  “I’d like to know why she didn’t write to me when she first saw you,” Maddy said, realizing as she spoke just how much it was needling her. “I’d have come, risked the U-boats.”

  “Well, I’m glad you didn’t do that.”

  “Seriously, Luke.” She pulled herself up onto her knees, facing him straight on. “She’s always gossiped; why would she have kept this to herself?”

  He shrugged, shook his head, with a carelessness she couldn’t understand. “I don’t know.”

  “You’re not angry at her? I’m angry.…”

  “I can see that.”

  “I’m going to speak to her, actually.”

  “Don’t,” he said. “Please don’t. What can you possibly gain from it?”

  “I might feel better.…”

  “By talking to Diana?” he said, making her smile against her will. “Please,” he said, reaching for her, “leave it alone.”

  “All these years, though,” she said, and felt tears pricking once more, through her smile—of sadness, such sadness, at all that could have been. “It feels so … needless.”

  “But done,” he said. “It’s all done.”

  “How can you be so philosophical about it?”

  “I haven’t been,” he said. “I wasn’t this afternoon, when I saw you in the garden.”

  “Then…”

  “I’ve had time,” he said, “weeks to come to terms with it.” His gaze bore into hers; so alive, so his. “I was beside myself earlier, and then I remembered…”

  “Remembered?”

  “Why I came,” he said. “All the years we’ve got left.” He rested his forehead against hers. “It’s what happens now that matters.”

  “We know what happens,” she said. “We start again. You, me, and Iris.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “Why?” she said, pulling back. “Why not?”

  “Because you’re married.”

  “To you,” she said. “I’m married to you.”

  “No,” he said, “to Guy.”

  “I married you first,” she protested, but even as she did, she remembered what he’d said to her before, back at Guy’s gate. I’m scared, of what you’ve done, and felt her own fear creep back, trickling through her. “Luke,” she said, “we’re married.”

  “I died.”

  “No,” she said, “you didn’t.”

  “I did. Legally, I did. I saw a lawyer before I left.” He stared. “Guy is your husband, not me.”

  “No,” she shook her head, “no. It can’t be right.”

  The pain in his eyes, his face, told her it was.

  “Oh God,” she said, pressing her hand to her head, trying to take it in, feeling sick, shaky with dread, because she couldn’t see a way out. A divorce would take years. You had to be married at least three. Even then, Guy would have to sue her for adultery, since she wasn’t allowed to divorce him, not unless he’d committed a crime. It would all be dragged through the courts, and poor Iris …

  “It doesn’t need to be divorce,” said Luke, taking her hand. “We can request an annulment.”

  “An annulment?” she said. “That’s better?”

  “Quicker,” he said. “Less public, apparently. But Guy will need to give his consent.”

  “Then I’ll ask him for it,” she said, and felt her nausea grow at the prospect.

  “You’re sure?” Luke asked.

  “Of course I’m sure,” she said. Whatever her dread, she’d never been so certain of anything. She turned, looking out to sea, the horizon she’d dreamed of crossing thousands and thousands of times before. “I want us to go home,” she said. “I’ve never stopped fantasizing about your house in Richmond.”

  “Your house now. You inherited it.”

  “Ours, then.”

  “I gather you refused to sell it.”

  “I was waiting for the market to improve,” she said, and smiled, in spite of herself, as he reached for her and kissed her again, dispelling, for a few short seconds, all of their worries.

  She leaned back against him, pulling his arms around her. They sat like that for some time, breathing the thick night air, both watching the rippling sea, both silent. For herself, she couldn’t help anymore but think of Guy, and what it was going to do to him when she shattered the family they’d so recently created. Iris, too, would be very upset, of that she was almost certain. But it had to happen, it all had to happen.…

  “Peter told me you panicked before the wedding,” said Luke, breaking into her anxiety, letting her know where his thoughts had been. “I was going to say before, up at the villa … I wish you hadn’t gone through with it.”

  “I had to,” she said.

  “Peter said that, too.”

  “Everyone was in town,” she said, compelled to explain. “The viceroy had come. I don’t know what might have happened to my father. As for Guy…” She broke off, just picturing how broken he’d have been, then felt worse herself, because it was hardly going to be any different now.

  “You had your wedding night at the Taj,” said Luke.

  “Don’t,” she said.

  “I can’t bear the thought of it,” he said.

  “Then don’t think,” she said. “Please, just don’t think.”

  “When will you talk to him?”

  “Soon,” she said. “It has to be soon.” And, because she’d been wondering it all night, but hadn’t been able to bring herself to ask, “How long can you stay?”

  “For however long it takes you to leave,” he said, and dipped his head, looking at her. “Please, don’t let that be too long.”

  * * *

  Inevitably, the horizon lightened, gradually turning from palest yellow to gold with the rising sun. Reluctantly, slowly, Luke walked with her back to the villa. There was nowhere else for her to go. It was impossible to leave him. She kissed him—lingeringly, holding on to his hands for as long as she might—promising to come to his rooms before the day was out.

  “Will you tell Guy that’s what you’re doing?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “I don’t want to sneak around, Maddy. I can’t stand this being furtive.”

  “I don’t want that either,” she said. “But I’m so scared of hurting him.…”

  “Waiting won’t make that easier.”

  She sighed, acknowledging it. “I’ll see how he is this morning,” she said, “tell him however much feels right.”

  She had every intention of doing just that. Her resolve hardened with every step she took down the quiet, dawn-lit driveway. Waiting won’t make it easier. She let herself into the villa’s shaded front hall, braced to go straight upstairs to his room, let him know that she’d seen Luke, at the very least.

  But there was a note in Guy’s hand waiting for her on the porch table. Frowning, loose hair falling over her shoulder, she stooped to pick it up.

  Maddy dearest,

  All was silent in your room, I didn’t want to wake you. Iris is still fast asleep, too, hopefully dreaming of ice cream. I’ve had to go to work, but have sent word to your parents and Della to meet us at the Taj at n
oon. Your father can tell Peter. I will see you all there—and hope Iris can contain her excitement, and that you have slept well.

  I love you, my dear,

  Your Guy

  She reread the words, part relieved at the reprieve, but mostly uneasy. All was silent in your room. Had he really not checked on her himself?

  In his shoes, she would have checked.

  Or had he stopped himself, preferring not to know that she wasn’t there? She imagined him outside her door, pensive, listening for the sound of her breath, the creak of her mattress, hoping … She closed her eyes, lids grainy from lack of sleep, and saw his crushed expression when he heard nothing, feeling the awful hurt he must have felt, the betrayal.

  Was that why he’d left so early for the hospital? To avoid running into her coming back?

  Deciding the answer was almost certainly yes, she gripped his note, replaying his happiness these past months—his smiles, his laughter with Iris, his euphoria when she, Maddy, had said she’d marry him—and, thinking of how very long he’d been alone before that, felt herself grow heavy.

  I’m not going to give up on us, he’d said. She remembered that now.

  And he wouldn’t, of course; not on her, not on Iris. Not willingly. Good and kind as he might be, he was also smart, very determined, and no victim.

  It had been stupidly naive of her to think that the only difficulty was going to be in asking him for the annulment. Torturous as that was going to be—especially given his disinclination to let her talk to him at all—she realized there was a much worse prospect to consider.

  The very strong possibility that he wouldn’t consent to there being an annulment at all.

  * * *

  Sickeningly dubious on the likelihood of an annulment himself, Luke stared after her as she disappeared into the house, aching to call her back. It felt wrong, deeply wrong, to watch her go anywhere he wasn’t able to follow. If he could have, he’d have stayed on that beach with her forever.

  He paused a second longer, reliving the moment when he’d realized it was her in that rickshaw. He’d wanted to shout, to punch the air in relief, elation. Even with all Peter’s assurances, it had meant … everything … that she hadn’t been inside with Guy, but out, trying to find him, as desperate as he was.

  He ran his tongue over his bruised lips. He could still feel her kiss. He could smell her scent. She was so much the same—her voice, her smile, her laugh and every gesture; worth every second of these years he’d spent trying to get back to her. More, much more.

  He’d do it all again if he had to.

  He turned from the villa, away from its dark windows, its creeping plants and empty balconies, unable to stand the thought that she was now in it. Guy’s motor wasn’t in the driveway. He comforted himself with that. For now, at least, he had no need to torture himself with the idea of Maddy with him—or Iris chatting to him, with her voice that he still hadn’t heard beyond his own imagination.

  With a long, steadying breath, he set off, not down the hill, but up it, back to Maddy’s parents’ house. Much as he wanted to go straight to his old rooms (he’d hadn’t slept since he’d woken on the ship the morning before and was desperate to collapse on the soft mattress, muted sunlight seeping through the shutters, the salty breeze coming off the sea), he had to see Maddy’s mother first, and tell her what he hadn’t had the heart to admit to Maddy: that he knew all about the letter Diana had written to her, back in 1916, saying she’d seen a man just like him at the King’s Fifth.

  I’d have come again myself, Diana had written to Arnold, along with the clippings she’d sent. I absolutely would have, had Alice not been so sure it was impossible Luke was alive. She made me swear not to give his wife, Maddy, false hope. What could one do? I trust no blame is cast in this direction.

  Luke had cast rather a lot of blame.

  At first.

  He’d been incandescent with Alice. He’d gone over and over the endless days and months and seasons he’d sat alone, waiting—his parents grieving, Maddy grieving—railing at how they need never have happened, if only she’d done something, told Maddy.

  It was Arnold who’d talked him round in the end.

  “Do you know how many letters we get from relatives?” Arnold had said. “Hundreds, more than hundreds, begging us to tell them their sons or husbands might be here.” His eyes had been intent behind his spectacles. “Their hope,” he’d waved at Diana’s letter, “this false hope Alice was worried about, it’s torture for them.”

  “But this wasn’t just hope,” Luke had tried to argue. “I was here.”

  “Alice wouldn’t have thought that possible,” Arnold had said. “You weren’t reported missing. There was no presumed. No one guessed that poor boy’s body wasn’t yours. They buried you. You were dead. Maddy would have had a telegram, probably all your belongings sent to her, a letter from your CO.…”

  “But Diana…”

  “Said that she’d seen someone who looked like you. Only that.” Arnold had sighed. “You’ve told me how Alice loves Maddy. Think how hard she’d have found it to see her suffering.” He’d paused, giving Luke time to do just that. “In doing this,” Arnold had gone on, “she’d simply have been protecting her.”

  “From me?”

  “From more grief,” Arnold had said, “which would have been waiting for Maddy if she’d come all this way and found Diana had been wrong.”

  “She wasn’t wrong.…”

  “Alice didn’t know that,” Arnold had said. “And I’m no gambler, but I would stake a great deal on the probability that she’s thought about it every day since, wondering if she did the right thing.”

  She knew now, of course, that she hadn’t. Luke had seen her the afternoon before in the garden, behind Maddy. The shock, then alarm that had filled her face when she’d seen him.

  It was why he had to talk to her.

  He turned through the gates, squinting in the rapidly intensifying sunlight, feeling the sweat prickle beneath his shirt, and made for the house.

  He’d meant what he’d said to Maddy earlier. He had no interest in trawling over the past, all the might-have-beens. They’d been granted this second chance that millions would never have; it was a gift, a privilege.

  It really was only what they did with it that mattered now.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Alice studied Luke from the drawing room window, remembering how she’d used to watch him and Madeline idle down the driveway back when they’d first been courting. Only this time she didn’t attempt to tell herself that everything was going to be fine.

  Nothing would be now, she was sure.

  She was up, dressed for church, not that she could face going. She hadn’t slept. She felt wrung out from tiredness, shock. And guilt. So much guilt and fear.

  Richard was hardly speaking to her. She’d told him, of course, about Diana’s letter, as soon as they’d all come inside from the party.

  “And you never thought to speak of this sooner?” he’d said, voice straining with the effort of not shouting.

  “I didn’t think there was any point,” she’d said.

  “In telling me?” he’d said. “Her father?”

  “I’m so sorry.…”

  “For what part of it?” he’d hissed, anger growing, as livid as she’d ever known him.

  “Everything,” she’d said, even as her mind had raced, forcing her to face up to the desperate hurt she’d so unwittingly contributed to—not just Madeline’s, not just Iris’s and Luke’s, but Luke’s parents’ (she couldn’t stand it), Peter’s, Luke’s other friends’, his aunts’, his uncles’—so fast she couldn’t absorb the magnitude of it. She’d fought her tears, knowing she had no right to them, sorry for everything.

  “I’d have made you tell her,” Richard had said. “Or,” he’d stared, “is that why you kept so quiet? Because you knew I would, and you didn’t want her going anywhere.…”

  “No,” she’d said, aghast that he could
even think it. “No.”

  “Well, you got what you always wanted, Alice. She married Guy. And look how happy it’s made her.”

  “Richard…”

  He’d walked away. From her. In just the same way as she’d walked away from him too many times in their marriage.

  She might not have done it so frequently had she had the faintest idea how very much it hurt.

  She needed Richard to forgive her, to talk to her, understand how afraid she was: of what she’d done, how Madeline would hate her for it, and—more than anything—that Madeline would choose Luke, leave India, and take Iris with her. She clenched her cold fingers, feeling the pressure of her terror in her bones, her muscles, overwhelming her.

  She couldn’t think what she was going to do.

  And now Luke was almost at the house. She couldn’t stop looking at him. She’d been too blinded by panic to see him properly the day before, but she saw him now. As she did, and absorbed the truth of the life in him—the warmth in his handsome face (that face she’d thought buried beneath the soil of Flanders), the color in his brown curls; the rise and fall of his chest as he jogged the final few paces to the porch—she felt something in her soften, despite everything. She’d grown to love him in the end. In her way. Hard as she’d fought against it, he’d won her over: with his heart, his fun, and how happy he’d always made Madeline. She recalled how she’d wept, back when she’d wired him about Iris’s birth, full of grief at what he was enduring, and all that he was missing.

  Your family is waiting for you, she’d written, and had only wanted that he should come back.

  She was glad that he was alive. She was.

  But everything had changed. Madeline and Iris had moved on.

  Was it so wrong that she wished he’d just stayed away?

  He knocked at the door.

  She turned, but made no move to answer it.

  She knew why he’d come. She’d been expecting his call. Hadn’t Diana said that she’d made mention of all she, Alice, had concealed to his doctor?

  Alice didn’t blame him for wanting to confront her. But nor did she feel equal to facing whatever he might say.