and I only know one poem and it’s called “Ithaka” and I think it’s codswallop.’”
Viva laughed. “What did he say?”
“He said, ‘Why?’ and I said, ‘Because it’s a lie. It’s all about finding diamonds and pearls on your travels and coming back a richer person, but if anything, being in India is going to make me feel much poorer, because if I hadn’t come, I wouldn’t know how wonderful life can be.’
“He didn’t say anything for a while; in fact we sat in silence. A small funeral party had come down to the lake and we watched this man strip down to his dhoti, wash himself, and scatter his father’s ashes on the surface of the lake. That was quite sad and Toby explained how the man was saying good-bye. That was interesting, and then I told him the whole story about Pandit and he was horrified, too.
“In the car going home he said that he didn’t agree with me about ‘Ithaka’ being just about the joys of setting out into the unknown, he thought it was about finding yourself, something like that anyway.
“Then he stopped the car near Chowpatty Beach. The sun was setting and he kissed me. Oh, Viva, have I finally gone mad?” Tor’s big blue eyes lit up.
“Go on! Go on!” Viva was the one on the edge of her seat now; Tor was in a trancelike state.
“He said, ‘I have a preposterous idea to put to you. You don’t want to go home and I want to get married, so let’s get married. It’ll be an adventure, and I already know you make me laugh.’”
“Oh no, no, no!” Viva put her hands over her ears. “This can’t be true.”
“It’s true.” Tor folded her hands in her lap and looked down at them.
“Tor, you went out with this man for one afternoon. You can’t do it, you simply can’t.”
“But it’s not like that.” Tor put the flannel back on her forehead. “That’s the funny thing. You know how sometimes you just know.”
“No, I don’t,” said Viva. “Not like this.”
“Toby says it’s more like an Indian marriage except that we’ve arranged it ourselves.”
“But it’s nothing like that, Tor,” Viva protested. “You know nothing about him or his parents and they know nothing about you.”
“I know that his mother lives in Hampstead with his father, who is an architect, and that she writes poetry and that she goes swimming in a pond in Hampstead Heath every morning with a kettle in her hand.”
“It’s to make the water warmer,” Tor added helpfully.
“Wonderful.”
“Oh, Viva.” Tor clasped her hands together like a child. “Try to understand. I don’t have to go home to Middle Wallop this way. I shall have a house of my own. He said our life together would be a journey of exploration—like those Buddhist monks who go into the forest in order to find their ant-man or something like that.”
“Atman,” said Viva. “It means inner essence, and none of this sounds remotely monklike to me.”
“Oh, Viva,” Tor said suddenly. “This headache really is a corker. Do you have another powder?”
Viva dissolved some more Epsom salts in a glass of water.
“How old is he, Tor?” she asked more gently. She was surprised to feel herself almost panting with alarm.
“Twenty-seven and a half, and he earns one and a half thousand pounds a year teaching at a school for Indian boys in Amritsar. It’s called St. Bart’s or something. We’ll have our own house there.”
“I thought you said he was much older than you?”
“I’ve told you already, he was wearing his father’s dinner jacket. It made him look vast—he’s really quite slim.”
“And has he actually proposed to you yet?”
Tor looked secretive. “Well…”
“Come on, Tor, out with it.”
After a tremulous silence Tor said, “I am already bethrothed.” She rolled back the cuff of her dress and showed Viva a silver bracelet around her wrist. “He gave me this—in the Hindu religion it means ‘beloved.’”
“But you’re not a Hindu, Tor.”
“I know, and I couldn’t give a fig. We went to the Bombay Registry Office yesterday and I have this, too.” She showed Viva a gold band, which she’d hung on a chain inside her dress. “We’re eloping tonight. I shall leave a note for Ci Ci and I’ve already sent a telegram to my mother, and the best thing of all about this, Viva,” her eyes blazed with excitement, “is that it’s too late for anyone to do anything about it.”