‘Don’t look so serious,’ came a voice from Maddy’s left, making her start, ‘not on New Year’s.’
Maddy turned, met the mock-scolding glare of her friend, Della Wilson. The two of them had been on the voyage over from Tilbury together, in the same row of cabins as all the other single women on their way to families in India – in Della’s case, to stay with her older brother, Peter. They’d bonded over the ship’s irresistible high teas, their discomfort at the rest of the passengers’ assumption that they were all part of the ‘fishing fleet’, India-bound to find husbands. Which of course is exactly what my mother is hoping I’ll do, Della had said through a mouthful of chocolate eclair. It’s why she let me come. Not that I’m averse. She’d swallowed. I’d just much rather go tiger hunting instead.
‘Where did you spring from?’ Maddy asked her now. ‘I haven’t seen you all night.’
‘I’ve only just got here,’ Della said. ‘You can blame Peter for that, if he ever decides to come.’
‘Where is he?’
‘Heaven knows. He was meeting some friend earlier at the Taj Mahal Hotel, but was meant to be coming back to the house to fetch me. I imagine they both got lost by way of the Taj bar.’ She fanned her flushed face. ‘I was worried I was going to miss midnight, so I hailed a rickshaw in the end. Don’t tell Peter. He keeps telling me off for getting them alone.’
Maddy, who’d oft heard Peter bemoan how much simpler his life had been before his irrepressible sister had descended on it, laughed and said, ‘Poor Peter.’
‘Poor Peter nothing,’ said Della. ‘God,’ she blew air from her bottom lip, ‘it’s oven-like in here. Come outside? We can squeeze a quick smoke in before he gets here and tells me off for that too.’
Maddy, deciding she could do with one – and without another raised eyebrow from her mother – nodded.
‘So who’ve you been dancing with?’ Della asked as, together, they picked their way through the heaving room.
‘The usual suspects,’ said Maddy, naming a couple of army captains, a perpetually sunburnt naval officer, and a handful of civil servants who, like Peter, worked for her father in the Bombay offices.
‘Not Guy Bowen?’ said Della, in an overly innocent voice and a nod to where he was standing, deep in conversation with some of the other surgeons from the military hospital.
Maddy rolled her eyes. ‘Would you stop it?’ she said. ‘He’s my parents’ friend.’
‘Your friend too. He calls on you often enough.’
Maddy pushed the veranda door wide. ‘He could be my father.’
‘Not really,’ said Della. ‘He can’t be much over forty. You’re almost twenty-three.’
‘I’m fairly sure,’ said Maddy, ‘that he used to bounce me on his knee when I was a little girl.’
‘Did he just?’ said Della, in a way that made them both burst out laughing.
They carried on into the close, balmy night. As they went out onto the seaside terrace, the band played on, and the clock in the pulsing ballroom behind them struck eleven: the very last hour of 1913.
It was quieter outside, the sultry air acting as a muffler on the music, the voices of all those milling around, lounging at the tables in the shadows. Flame torches crackled, lighting Maddy and Della’s way to the sea wall. Not that they really needed them. This was hardly the first time they’d disappeared off for a cigarette together. They’d discovered the hidden spot on the sea stairs at a do not long after they’d arrived and had been using it to escape the watchful eyes of their relatives and the gossiping memsahibs ever since – much as they’d used to slip off to the P&O lifeboat decks on the voyage.
As they walked through the blackness, Maddy opened her clutch, searching out the cigarettes her parents’ bearer kept her supplied with. (‘I am doing it for a small fee, yes?’ he’d said hopefully, the first time she’d asked. ‘Yes,’ she’d agreed, handing over the rupees, ‘yes. And for my sanity, too.’) She was still rummaging amongst her comb, matches and powder compact when Della grabbed her hand and squealed, ‘Quick, Peter’s coming.’
Reflexively, Maddy turned to look in the direction of the grand Taj Hotel, dropping her matches in the process. She bent to fetch them, eyes on the approaching Peter. He was easy enough to spot, even on the dark promenade; it was his slight build, that ambling walk of his. He hadn’t seen them. He was talking to the other man with him, Maddy assumed the friend he’d collected from the Taj. She stared, taking in the stranger’s outline beneath the palms. He was taller than Peter, broader too. She wondered briefly who he was, but didn’t give it much thought. She didn’t have time; Della beckoned her on.
Abandoning her matches, Maddy followed in Della’s hasty wake, gathering up her silk skirts to climb over the sea wall, then down the damp stairs to perch beside a breathless Della on the usual step.
It was quieter yet nestled beneath the terrace. The water rippled against the stone wall, and local children splashed, playing – despite the late hour – in the Arabian Sea, in and out of the nearby fishing boats. A gentle breeze carried from the city, musty with pollen, dust and drains, the heat of hundreds of thousands of people. Maddy felt it cloak her sticky bare back, her upper arms, and let her shoulders loosen, relishing the calm after the glittering intensity above. Placing a cigarette to her lips, she leant over to let Della light it, and inhaled, closing her eyes at the rush of lightness to her head.
‘I wonder what everyone’s doing back in grey old England,’ said Della, in a tone that made it clear how much she enjoyed the thought that whatever it was, it was nothing like this.
‘Do you really not miss it?’ Maddy asked. ‘Not even a bit?’
‘Not even a smidgen,’ said Della. She looked at Maddy sideways, a tease in her round eyes. ‘You should try it, you’d be much more comfortable.’
‘Easy for you to say,’ said Maddy, because it was. Della had an open ticket to travel back whenever she wanted; family, friends that she knew she’d see again.
‘You were so looking forward to coming,’ Della reminded her, ‘on the boat.’
‘I know,’ said Maddy, ‘I do know.’ But on the voyage, she’d thought her trip to India was just a holiday. She’d been excited. With college finished, it had all felt like such an adventure, one to relish before she took up the teaching post she’d been offered. And she’d been desperate to see her father again. Unlike her mother, he’d visited her every couple of years in Oxford where she’d been staying with her Aunt Edie – his sister. When Maddy was younger, she’d used to cross off the days until his next trip in her diary, drawing up elaborate itineraries for picnics, trips to the theatre, all of that. A long spell staying with him had seemed such a treat. She’d even let herself hope for … something … with her mother: a relationship beyond stilted letters with foreign postmarks, perhaps. However, somewhere between her P&O liner leaving Port Said and arriving at the chaotic docks in Bombay, things had rather fallen apart for Aunt Edie and Uncle Fitz in Oxford, and Maddy no longer had a home left in England to go back to, no job either, thanks to Uncle Fitz, nor means to set herself up on her own. Just a mother who became ever less talkative whenever she raised the subject of whether she and Richard might see their way to helping her do it.