Books > East of the Sun > Excerpts

Chapter Two

"She seems all right, doesn't she?" Mrs. Sowerby said to Mrs. Wetherby after Viva had gone. "She's very good-looking," she added, as if this decided everything, "if you discount that appalling suit. Honestly, Englishwomen and their clothes." She made a strange hood of her upper lip when she said the word "clothes," but for once Tor couldn't be bothered to react.

How balloon -- they had a chaperone, phase two of the plan had fallen neatly into place. Her mother's pantomime of careful consideration might have fooled the others, but it hadn't fooled her. They'd fought so bitterly that summer that a hairy ape could have applied for the job and her mother would have said "He's perfect," so desperate was she to see Tor gone.

And now, the excitement was almost more than she could bear. The tickets had come that morning, and they were leaving in two weeks. Two weeks! They had a whole day ahead of them in London in which to buy clothes and other necessities from a thrilling list that their Bombay hostess had provided.

Her mother, who normally had all kinds of rules about things -- for instance, only lemon and water on Tuesdays, and no cake on Wednesday, and saying "bing" before you went into a room because it made your mouth a pretty shape -- had relaxed them, even to the extent of allowing her walnut cake at Derry & Toms. And now she knew she was definitely going, all the other things that normally drove her completely mad about Mother -- the way she went all French and pouty as soon as she got to a city; the embarrassing hats; her overpowering scent (Guerlain's Shalimar); not to mention the other rules about men, and conversation -- seemed almost bearable, because soon she'd be gone, gone, gone, hopefully never to return, and the worst year of her life would be over.

After coffee, Mrs. Wetherby flew off to pick up Rose at the doctor's.

Tor's mother was sipping a hot water and lemon -- no tisane had been found -- she had her silver pencil and notebook out with the clothes list inside.

"Now jods. Jodhpurs. You'll probably go hunting in India." It seemed to Tor that her mother was speaking louder than usual, as if hoping the people at the next table would know that, for once, they were the exciting people.

"Ci Ci says it's too stupid to buy them in London; she knows a man in Bombay who'll run them up for pennies."

Ci Ci Mallinson was a distant cousin of her mother's and would be Tor's hostess when she arrived in Bombay. She had also heroically agreed to organize Rose's wedding without ever having met her. Her letters, written on thrilling brittle writing paper in a slashing hand, spoke of constant parties, gymkhanas, days at the races, with the occasional grand ball at the governor's.

"Such a good idea," she'd written in her last about a recent ball at a place called the Bombay Yacht Club. "All the decent young Englishmen are rounded up, and the girls spend ten minutes with each of them and then get moved on -- great fun and usually quite long enough to know if one can get on." Before she'd signed off she'd warned, "People out here really do try to keep up, so be sure to send out a couple of issues of Vogue with the girls, and if it's not too much of a bore, one of those divine silk tea roses -- mine was munched upcountry by a horde of hungry bog ants!"

"Quinine," her mother was ticking away furiously, "face cream, darling, don't forget, please. I know I nag about unimportant things, but there really is nothing more ageing and you are already quite brown." This was true; Tor had her ancestors' smooth olive-brown skin. "Eyebrow tweezers, darling, I am going to take off your own caterpillars before you go." Eyebrows were an obsession of her mother. "Evening dresses, a camp stool -- oh, for goodness's sake! I think that's too Dr. Livingstone...I'm going to strike that -- and..." she lowered her voice, "she says you'll need packets and packets of you-know-whats. They're wildly expensive there and I -- "

"Mummy!" Tor frowned at her and moved away; any moment now she felt her mother would blight her beautiful morning by talking about "Dolly's hammocks," her code for sanitary towels. "Mummy," Tor leaned across the table, "please don't cross out the camp stool. It sounds so exciting."

"Oh, how pretty you look when you smile." Her mother's face suddenly collapsed. "If only you'd smile more."

In the silence that followed, Tor sensed a series of complicated and painful thoughts taking place under her mother's hat; some of them she was all too familiar with: had Tor smiled more, for instance, or looked more like Rose, all the expense of sending her to India might have been saved; if she'd eaten less cake; drunk more water and lemon on Tuesdays; acted more French. Her mother seemed always to be adding her up like this and coming to the conclusion she was a huge disappointment.

But now, how strange, an actual tear was cutting a channel through the loose powder on her mother's face and had lodged in her lipstick.

"Hold my hand, darling," she said. When she took a deep sobbing breath, Tor couldn't help it, she moved her chair away. Her mother in this mood seemed horribly raw and human, and there was nothing she could do about it. It was too late; the harm had already been done.

It was impossible to find a taxi that day, and even though they weren't normally bus people, an hour or so later Tor was on top of an omnibus, looking down on drops of rain drying on the tops of dusty trees in St. James's Park. The bus swept down Piccadilly toward Swan & Edgar, and Tor, feeling the perfumed bones of her mother sitting so unusually close to her, was surprised to feel another stab of sorrow.

This felt so exactly like the kind of outing a happy mother and daughter might have had, if she hadn't been so difficult; a father left at home with a plate of sandwiches, the "girls" up in town for the day.

From the top of the bus she could see the vast bowl of London spreading out to the horizon: splendid shops with mannequins in the window, interesting people -- already a much bigger world.

Bars of sunlight fell across her mother's face as she leaned to look out of the window. The blue feather in her hat wiggled like a live thing.

"Darling, do look!" she said. "There's the Ritz -- oh God, I've missed London," she breathed. And all the way down Piccadilly she pointed out what she called "some smart waterholes" (when Mother got excited her English let her down), places she and Daddy had eaten in when they had money, before Tor was born: Capriati's, the In and Out -- "dreadful chef " -- the Café Royal.

Tor heard a couple of shopgirls behind them titter and repeat, "dreadful chef."

But for once, she told herself she didn't give a damn -- she was going to India in two weeks' time. When you're smiling, When you're smiling, The whole world smiles with you.

"Darling," her mother pinched her, "don't hum in public, it's dreadfully common."

They'd arrived at the riding department at Swan & Edgar. Her mother, who prided herself on knowing the key assistants, asked for the services of a Madame Duval, a widow, she explained to Tor, who'd fallen on hard times and whom she remembered from the old days.

"We're looking for some decent summer jods," her mother had drawled unnecessarily to the doorman on the ground floor, "for the tailors in Bombay to copy."

Upstairs, Tor mentally rolled her eyes as Madame Duval, removing pins from her mouth, complimented Mrs. Sowerby on how girlish and slim she still looked. She watched her mother dimple and pass on her famous much-repeated advice about lemon juice and tiny portions. Tor had been forced to follow this starvation diet herself, all through the season, when her mother had only agreed to buy her dresses in a size too small so as to blackmail her into thinness. Sometimes she thought her mother wanted to slim her out of existence altogether: their fiercest row -- they'd almost come to blows -- was when her mother had found her one night, after another disastrous party where nobody had asked her to dance, wolfing down half a loaf of white bread and jam in the summer house.

That was the night when her mother, who could be mean in several languages, had introduced her to the German word Kummerspeck for the kind of fat that settles on people who use food to buck themselves up. "It means sad fat," she'd said, "and it describes you now."

"Right now I've got the larger size." Jolly Madame Duval had returned with a flapping pair of jods. "These might fit. Are we off to some gymkhanas this summer?"

"No," Tor's mother as usual answered for her. "She's off to India, aren't you, Victoria?"

"Yes." She was gazing over their heads at her reflection in the mirror. I'm huge, she was thinking, and fat.

"How lovely, India!" Madame Duval beamed at her mother. "Quite an adventure. Lucky girl!"

Her mother had decided to be fun. "Yes, it's très amusant," she told her. "When these girls go out they call them the Fishing Club because there are so many handsome young men out there."

"No, Mother," corrected Tor, "they call us the Fishing Fleet."

Her mother ignored her. "And the ones who can't find men there," her mother gave Tor a naughty look with a hint of challenge in it, "are called returned empties."

"Oh, that's not very nice," said Madame Duval, and then not too convincingly, "but that won't happen to your Victoria."

"Um..." Tor's mother made the little pout she always made when she checked her face in the mirror. She adjusted her hat. "Let's hope not."

I hate you, Mother. For one brief and terrible moment Tor imagined herself sticking a pin so hard into her mother that she made her scream out loud. I absolutely loathe you, she thought. And I'm never coming home again.Copyright © 2008 by Julia Gregson