East of the Sun by Julia Gregson Page B

deck chairs. “I feel I’m eavesdropping but I’m not.” A shadow stood up: it was Rose in a gauzy white dress, her blond hair burnished by the moonlight.
    “I came out here to think,” she said. “The others were so noisy.”
    “Did you hear all that?” said Viva.
    Rose looked embarrassed.
    “Not all of it. I used to argue with my brother all the time—isn’t it absolutely de rigueur?”
    “I don’t know if I can stand him.” Viva was shaking. “He’s so contemptuous.”
    A waiter had followed Rose in case she wanted anything, just as men would probably always do.
    “Coffee, madam? A nice liqueur? A cocktail? Emmeline Pitout will be singing her songs in the music room soon.”
    “I tell you what.” Rose was smiling at her. “Let’s go mad and have a brandy. I think the worst thing about him not being your brother is you can’t give him a fourpenny one. It would be so satisfying.”
    Rose had a wonderful laugh, warm and throaty. Its hint of wildness was what stopped her seeming too good to be true. She scrunched her eyes up like a child and abandoned herself to it.
    When Viva looked up, the moon was chasing their boat, spinning a faint golden mist over the haze of stars.
    “It must be so strange for him going back to India.” Rose sipped her brandy. “After all those years on his own.”
    “Ten years,” said Viva, trying to calm down. “And it is hell leaving India as a child—one moment, sun and freedom and blue skies, and lots of people running around after you who adore you. The next, well, he hasn’t spoken much to me about it, but you’re breaking the ice on a washbasin in some freezing school.”
    “Like being kicked out of paradise,” Rose said.
    “Yes, but India isn’t paradise. It has other ways of being awful.”
    “Examples, please, but nothing too horrid.”
    “Well, the heat for one thing. You have never, ever felt anything like it in England, it’s like being clubbed over the head sometimes, the flies, appalling poverty, but if you love it, as I do, it gets to you, it bores its way into your soul. You’ll see.”
    This was the longest proper conversation they’d had together since coming on board. Although her part of it had brought Viva close to tears, she was glad to be having it.
    “It’s so odd to think I’m going to be married there soon,” said Rose. The tip of her perfectly straight nose was showing above her stole, which she’d pulled up like a blanket. “There is quite a lot to think about.”
    Frightened, thought Viva. All of us.
    Rose had confessed to her the day before, as if it was a splendid joke, that she’d only met her fiancé a grand total of four times, five if you counted a point to point they’d been to near Salisbury.
    And Viva had wondered, How could you give yourself away so carelessly? Why had her parents allowed it? It wasn’t even like an arranged marriage in India where the families would have known each other for generations.
    “Yes, I can imagine,” said Viva. She wanted to touch her childish soft hand, or to put an arm around her, but she couldn’t. Instead, she thought of her own mother in her wedding dress, her laughing brown eyes, the gaiety of her expression. It made you feel dizzy to think about it. I’ve been frozen, she thought, since that moment.
    “It’s been such fun on the dear old Kaisar. ” Rose was twisting the sapphire ring on her wedding finger, her voice dreamy and far away. “All our new best friends, the sense that you’re always on the way to somewhere else. In fact”—she looked at her watch—“we should be able to see Port Said soon, or so our waiter told us.”
    She jumped up and walked toward the ship’s railings, her dress like butterfly wings in the moonlight.
    “Look. Oh, do look!” She pointed toward the horizon. “You can see the lights already.”
    Viva didn’t want to move. She shouldn’t have said all that to Guy.
    “Do come! Do look! It is so thrilling. Is it Port Said? It must