East of the Sun by Julia Gregson Page A

trunks there.”
    He gazed at her, so blankly at first that she thought he hadn’t heard. When he stood up his chair fell on the floor.
    “Were they assassinated?” The expression on his face was one of genuine, even exaggerated horror. “Did Indians kill them?” His face was contorted with disgust.
    She felt a spurt of shame move from her stomach to her chest. She simply couldn’t believe she’d blurted it out to him of all people, but now it was too late—he seemed gripped, horribly so, by her story.
    “No.” She held her hands up as if to tamp him down.
    “Were they shot?”
    The elderly couple at the next table were staring at them.
    “No,” she said.
    “So why?”
    “They just died,” she whispered. She felt a wave of heat go over her. “I don’t really want to talk about it. It was a car crash. I don’t know where.” She hated it when people asked for details.
    “I don’t know what to say. Tell me what I should say.” His voice had risen and she wished she’d kept her mouth shut—she seemed to have unhinged him and wanted the silent boy back. He rushed off.
     
    When she went on deck to look for him, the air felt thick and warm and the moon lay in a basket of cloud.
    “Guy,” she called out, but the rush of bow-water and faint echoes of music from the ballroom muffled her voice. Other passengers appeared through lit windows like a series of still lifes: some women playing cards, a white-haired old man extracting a cigar cutter from a waistcoat pocket, a group toasting each other and laughing. In a dark corner near the funnel, a couple were embracing, dark and oblivious like shadows.
    “Guy?” She was near the lifeboats now, a warm wind rushing through her hair. “Guy, where are you?”
    Half of her was inclined to let him stew in his own juices, but she was starting to feel more and more worried about him. His almost hysterical reaction to her story, the wearing of that dreadful overcoat, even now with the glass regularly hitting 100 degrees, the bright insincerity of his smile at times as though he were center stage at the Old Vic—what if he was barking mad rather than simply churlish and self-engrossed?
    After a fruitless search down empty corridors and on the landing of A deck, she found him at last, hiding in a lifeboat, stretched out in his long dark coat. He was smoking a cigarette.
    “Look,” she said, “lots of people have parents who died in India, so don’t worry about it too much. I also don’t really give a damn whether you’re interested in me or not.”
    The moon had gone behind a cloud but she could still see the wet of his cheeks and the desperate intensity of his eyes. He was drunk, she was sure of it, and in pain.
    “Why is life so awful?” he said.
    “It’s not all awful,” she said. “Things change, improve. I really shouldn’t have said it. I don’t know why I did.”
    “They’re gone now, gone for good.”
    “Yes.”
    “Your whole family.” Moonlight washed his face in a greenish glow. “Gone for good,” he repeated. “Forever.”
    She was almost certain he was thinking about himself again.
    “No,” she said. “No, I don’t believe that. Not really. Do you?”
    He sat up and stared at her.
    “Look, forget about me for a moment,” she said, realizing that this might be her only chance. “I want to ask you about yourself. You probably think I’m a hundred years old, but I’m not, and I do remember what it’s like to be torn out of one place and put in another, that it’s—” Her voice was stumbling but it was the best she could do.
    “No, that’s not it,” he interrupted. “Not at all. Look, sorry…I’m going to bed.”
    As he hauled himself out of the lifeboat, the cotton wool fell off his shaving cut. It was bleeding again. She watched him walk away with his stiff, high-shouldered gait. He disappeared through a lit doorway.
    “I’ve betrayed you,” she said out loud.
    “I’m so sorry,” a voice said from behind a pile of