Meet Me in Bombay

by Jenny Ashcroft

  Sweet Emma.

  The boy kicked the ball high into the sky, then caught it with the side of his foot. Luke watched the way his flushed face lit up, how he looked around to see if his parents had seen the feat, and felt his own chest ache, remembering, remembering.…

  Miriam laughed with the boy, telling him, in her lightly accented voice, to do it again. She was arm in arm with her oldest daughter, hand holding her hand. He saw how happy she was, how content.

  He drew a shaky breath, mind moving—almost against his will—back to Maddy.

  Would she look like this now, if she were walking here with their Iris?

  He breathed deep, trying to picture it. He blanketed his mind of the garden’s noise, its rain, its laughter and other people, needing them with him instead.

  But they didn’t appear.

  Or at least, not in the way he wanted to imagine them.

  Instead, they came to him as they’d been when he’d looked down at them on the frantic Bombay quayside, from that ship’s deck, about to leave India for the very last time. He saw Maddy clutching Iris’s hand, little Iris waving up at him; their bright blue stares glued on his.

  He raised his hand, ready to wave back at them, here, in this garden. That was how vividly they appeared to him. He watched Maddy’s lips move, read the words that she said, and felt his throat tighten, until it was all he could do to breathe, just as it had back then.

  He stumbled toward a nearby bench, needing to sit down. He felt his way. He couldn’t look.

  His mind flooded with memory, and his eyes—his stinging, weary eyes—were suddenly too clouded by tears for him to see anything at all.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Bombay, 1921

  Maddy told Guy that he might not be the father, right there in the driveway. She didn’t hesitate. It was at once the hardest and easiest thing she ever did, because although it crippled her to snatch his happiness away so quickly, so cruelly, his smile terrified her enough that she simply couldn’t allow it to remain a second longer.

  “This is not as simple as you want it to be,” she said, feeling her eyes well all over again as, through the dusky darkness, she watched his elation drain from him.

  He knew what she was telling him. It was painfully obvious from his fallen face that he realized it all.

  But, “Of course it’s simple,” he said, and even held out his hand, reaching for hers.

  She didn’t blame him for trying to pretend. (Hadn’t she been doing the same thing?) She felt no resentment toward him at all; none of the anger she’d held on to this long month. Just heartbreak at the wrought vulnerability in his pleading gaze.

  She didn’t give him her hand, though. She held it back, fist clenched, knowing that she mustn’t attempt to be kind. Not this time.

  There could be no more hope.

  Instead, she took a step away from him. As she did, she felt her mother move toward her, touch her arm. She drew a shaky breath, strengthened, just a fraction, by the gesture, the almost unbelievable reassurance that Alice didn’t blame her, she wasn’t appalled. Just there. On her side.

  “You asked me for a month,” she forced herself to say to Guy, “it’s time to let it be over now. I promise you, we won’t shut you out. You’ll have a place in this child’s life…”

  “A place?” He stared, expression hardening. “A place?”

  “Guy, there’s every chance you’re not—”

  “No,” he said, cutting her off, just as he had so many times. “I won’t hear it.”

  “You have to,” she said, voice raised in growing despair. It made her franker than she might otherwise have been able to be. “I want to be with Luke,” she said. “I love Luke. He is Iris’s father, very likely this baby’s—”

  “Enough,” he said, turning so that she couldn’t see his face anymore (or, perhaps, so he didn’t have to look at hers), “it’s enough.”

  Before she knew what was happening, he was striding away from her to his motor.

  “Where are you going?” she called.

  He didn’t answer. Without even a goodbye to Alice, he left, too fast, his wheels scattering clouds of dust over the black lawn.

  It hit her that he might be going to confront Luke. She felt her panic intensify at the possibility. She hadn’t even spoken to Luke herself. He couldn’t hear about this from Guy …

  “Go,” said her mother, as though reading her mind, “I’ll look after Iris.”

  “Don’t tell her.”

  “Of course I won’t tell her. Go.”

  Maddy didn’t need to be pushed a third time. She went, taking her own motor, so preoccupied with getting to Luke that it didn’t occur to her until after she’d sped away how bloodshot her mother’s eyes had still been.

  Her mother, who’d been crying, too.

  Maddy hadn’t even asked if she was all right, or what had made her so upset in the first place. It’s only I saw Diana today …

  She gripped the steering wheel, trying to think what on earth she could have been talking about, cursing inwardly because she had no idea. She couldn’t turn back now, though. She accelerated on, through the black jungle, and told herself she’d talk to Alice as soon as she got back.

  For now, there really was only so much desperate worry she could take.

  * * *

  Guy wasn’t at Luke’s.

  Luke almost wasn’t at Luke’s. He’d been about to go out, over to meet Peter for drinks, still riding high on the afternoon he’d spent with Iris at the beach, and the thought of all he could finally see opening up ahead of them: the years and years he was starting to believe the three of them might truly have.

  Iris had let him carry her back up from the beach on his shoulders.

  He’d held his daughter on his shoulders.

  He smiled, just thinking about it as he did up his collar; the laughing way she’d grasped her salty palms to his cheeks, his hair. He was still smiling when he opened the door to Maddy.

  And then he saw her face.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, dread cooling his veins. “What’s happened?”

  “Everything,” she said, and as he pulled her inside, she told him, all of it, swollen eyes fixed on his, the words spilling from her, as though she was afraid that if she stopped talking, she wouldn’t be able to start again.

  He didn’t interrupt her. He heard everything she said—about the baby she was so desperate to be his (Yes, he thought numbly, I want that, too), how Guy had reacted just now, her own fear that he’d give them no annulment—and couldn’t speak at all. He held on to her, more from instinct than decision, and hardly knew what he did. It was all too much, too sudden; it was like it was happening just beyond his reach.

  It was only when she started telling him how sorry she was, how desperately sorry, that something in him clicked, bringing him back to her, to himself.

  He didn’t want her to be sorry, not for this.

  What did she have to be sorry for?

  “I tried to put him off before the party,” she said. “I didn’t want it, I swear to you.…”

  “Maddy,” he said, finally rediscovering his voice, “you think that makes me happy?” He stared at her distraught expression, shaking his head, appalled that she might. “It doesn’t make me happy.” Just thinking about her … putting up … with that. It killed him.

  In that moment, he wanted to kill Guy. His anger, intense enough where his wife’s husband was concerned, exploded within him. Guy must have sensed her reluctance back then. He must have.

  And yet he’d kept going anyway. Asked it of her.

  “Where is he now?” he said.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I thought he might be here.”

  “I wish he was,” he said. All month, he’d been on the edge of confronting him. He’d lost count of the number of times he’d battled, only just successfully, with the urge to go into that hospital and ask him what the hell he thought he was about, putting them all through this.r />
  We need him, Maddy had kept saying. He’ll come round.

  He will, Peter and Richard had assured him, time and again.

  Now, though, now …

  “I am so sorry,” came Maddy’s voice, breaking into his fury.

  “Why do you keep saying that?” he asked, softer now.

  “I should have told you.”

  “Yes,” he said, since it was undeniable, “you should.”

  “And the baby…”

  “Will be loved,” he said, without hesitation, realizing, as the words left him, how undeniable that was, too.

  “Yes?” she said, smiling—albeit very tentatively—for the first time since she’d arrived.

  “Yes,” he said, feeling the truth of it in his chest. He didn’t question it. It wasn’t a choice to be considered. Of course he hoped that the child was his, but he knew that it would be anyway, in every way that mattered.

  How could it not be, when it was hers?

  “Guy, though,” she said.

  “I know,” he said, since (even in spite of his own intense anger) he couldn’t remain cold to how much pain they were going to cause him. He saw how he loved Iris—just the way he’d hugged her, back at her birthday party, had been enough to show him that; he realized part of why he’d been behaving as he had was because of how scared he was of losing her as well as Maddy. It didn’t excuse him, nothing could, but Luke would have to have been inhuman not to understand it.

  And now they’d be taking this baby from him, too.

  “We’re not going to disappear,” he said. “Iris will need to see him, write.” He’d long since learned to make peace with that. “We’ll have to come back to see your mother.…”

  “I don’t know,” she said distractedly, “I’m determined to get her on a ship.”

  “So you keep saying.”

  She sighed deeply, and leaned against him. He rested his cheek on her head, leaning on her.

  “Is this going to be all right?” she said.

  “It has to be,” he said.

  “He’s a good person,” she said. “I want to believe he’ll do the right thing.”

  So did Luke.

  “We’ll manage, though,” she said. “Even if he holds back the annulment. We have a home, family. You have your work waiting—” She broke off, looked up at him.

  He saw the question in her eyes.

  “No one will take my work away,” he assured her, hoping that he was right. “We won’t be destitute. Not everyone will judge.”

  She nodded slowly.

  Plenty would, of course. They both knew that.

  But, “We’ll be together,” she said. “We’re going.”

  “We’re going,” he echoed. “No one can stop us doing that.”

  * * *

  “You absolutely can stop them,” said Guy’s lawyer: an old school acquaintance by the name of Henry Parsons who, while not a close friend, was familiar enough that Guy had felt able to call on him at home, even so late in the day.

  He’d been very good the month before when Luke had first returned, assuring Guy that not only was his marriage to Maddy valid, but he and he alone had the power to end it, be it by annulment or divorce. “She’s simply not allowed to sue you,” Henry had said, “not unless you give her grounds for suggesting you’ve raped another woman, or committed incest.”

  “Well, I’m not going to do that,” Guy had said, appalled.

  Henry had laughed, like it was a grand joke.

  He was just as relaxed this time, swilling his Scotch, telling Guy he had nothing to worry about, nothing, the courts would absolutely recognize his right as father to this baby. He was Maddy’s husband, no one else.

  “We can get a ruling to keep Maddy in India while she’s enceinte,” he said. “As the father, you’re the legal guardian of the child. You can seize full custody as soon as it’s born, without question.”

  “Well,” said Guy, shifting in his chair, “I wouldn’t want it to come to that.…”

  “Of course, of course,” Henry replied, reaching for a cigar, “but don’t tell her that, for God’s sake. None of this needs to end up in court at all. Just have a little chat, make sure she understands what the consequences will be if she keeps up this nonsense. She doesn’t strike me as the kind to put herself before her children. As I’ve said before, you’ve a case for claiming custody of Iris, too.”

  Guy stared into his own whiskey, baffled by how it could have come to this. They’d all been so happy, such a short time before. He’d been so happy.…

  “Don’t look so concerned,” Henry said. “Maddy’s going nowhere, and nor are the children. Your family’s safe, my friend.”

  Guy nodded, starting to feel safe, despite his ill ease. Henry’s words, spoken with such assurance, seemed … rational … to him, sitting in his paneled study full of law journals; almost reasonable.

  They continued to feel so all through his drive back to the villa.

  Even when he pulled up and looked toward Maddy’s glowing window—realizing, with a mixture of relief and apprehension, that she was not only home, but still awake, despite it being well past eleven—he was sure that it was right to go and talk to her, have that chat.

  When all was said and done, what choice had she given him?

  He was her husband. She’d chosen to marry him, given Iris to his care, and was carrying his baby. (It was his baby, he was certain of it. Absolutely certain. Definitely certain. Quite, entirely, conclusively … certain.) He could almost hear the little thing’s flickering heartbeat. He’d already imagined what it would be like to hold it for the first time. He could not, would not, let her take any of that away.

  And yet, as he climbed the stairs slowly, then stood outside her room, hand raised to knock, thinking, really thinking about looking into those eyes of hers and saying everything Henry had suggested he say, he found himself hesitating.

  Out of nowhere, he remembered the note his bearer had left waiting for him at the Sea Lounge, back at the start of this whole sorry affair, before Iris’s birthday lunch. Alice had sent it, insisting Guy’s bearer hurry to deliver it (“In the noon heat, sahib,” his bearer had said indignantly afterward), apparently anxious that Guy should receive her telling-off before everyone else arrived.

  It hadn’t been the easiest start to that torturous lunch.

  I’ll say nothing to Madeline, she’d written. I don’t need to tell you that she would never forgive you for trying to use Iris against her. I’m struggling myself. I understand why you did it, though. Guy, I’m scared, too. But I’ve promised Iris you won’t again, and that there’ll never be a world in which she won’t see any of us. I’ve told her that whatever happens, her parents will make sure she’s happy, never sad.

  Don’t make her sad again, Guy. If you love her as much as I believe you do, find a more honest way to convince my daughter you deserve her.

  Please don’t become something less than you are.

  She’d said it to him again, later that same day when she’d found him at the hospital, ready to convince him of how unfair he was being by trying to come between Iris and Luke.

  “A chaperone, Guy?” she’d said, making him feel like an animal. “Have you forgotten what Luke has been through? All he’s missed? Can’t you see how this will push everyone away?”

  She’d still wanted Maddy to choose him, back then. He’d been sure of it. I’m scared, too. It was why he’d listened to her, about not supervising Luke’s time with Iris at least.

  Iris, who despite his own demeaning efforts to keep her on side—with all his talk of how she must do her best to be polite to Luke, no matter how frightened she might be; his assurances that he’d keep her safe, always look after her, how could I bear it if I didn’t get to do that?—had started to fall under her father’s spell, too.

  He turned, looking wearily down the corridor toward her room. He pictured her asleep on her side, lips moving in a dream, dark curls sticking to her rosy cheeks, and dr
opped his head, replaying the cautious way she’d started to look at him lately. The uncertainty in her. She’d started to doubt him, this sweet child who’d once run to him so eagerly. Become afraid of what he might try and tell her next.

  A cough from behind Maddy’s door made him turn again, and remember how sick she’d been before. He felt his heart pinch in concern as he heard her run toward her bathroom. He wanted to go to her, hold her shoulders. Be there.

  He only ever wanted to do that.

  He hesitated a second longer, staring at her wooden door. He stepped toward it and pressed his hand against the warm, damp paneling, his forehead, too.

  They’d lost their way, the two of them, too quickly. They hadn’t had enough happiness. Not nearly enough time.

  He closed his eyes, mind filling now with everything he must say to her.

  He’d never be able to make himself do it. He knew he wouldn’t. So he didn’t try.

  He turned slowly and went into his own room, where he wrote it all in a letter instead.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Maddy was awake when Guy pushed the envelope under their connecting doors. She’d been awake all night, listening to him pacing, sighing, scribbling at his desk. She’d felt almost tempted to get up, go and talk to him. Please, can we just do that at last? But she’d felt too sick—too drained by the emotion of the day—to do much beyond lie on her bed, her hand to her stomach, going over the hundred possible forms whatever was coming next might take.

  She’d been worrying about her mother, too. She hadn’t been fair to her, when she’d got home from Luke’s and found her in the nursery, watching Iris sleep with a look of such abject loss on her pale face.

  Luke had been with her. He’d insisted on driving her back after she’d had to be sick again at his apartment, saying he didn’t want her going anywhere alone. It was as they’d reached Malabar Hill and she’d started telling him about her mother’s earlier upset—realizing (from the entirely unshocked way he’d frowned at the road) that he at least seemed to know just what it had all been about—that she’d paused, hearing her mother’s words once more, it’s only I saw Diana today, and finally, creakingly, felt everything fall into place.