that age couldn’t travel by himself, or indeed, why his parents, the Glovers, didn’t come home to collect him themselves.
“Is there anything else you’d like to know about me, references and so forth?” she asked instead.
“No,” said Mrs. Bannister. “Oh well, maybe yes, you should give us a reference, I suppose. Do you have people in London?”
“My present employer is a writer, a Mrs. Driver.” Viva scribbled down the address quickly for Mrs. Bannister, who, fiddling with her handbag and trying to catch the waitress’s eye, seemed half in flight. “She lives opposite the Natural History Museum.”
“I’ll also send you a map of Guy’s school and your first payment,” said Mrs. Bannister. “And thank you so much for doing this.” She produced all her rather overwhelming teeth at once.
But what had most struck Viva, watching the back of Mrs. Bannister’s raincoat flapping in her haste to enter her taxi, was how shockingly easy it was to tell people lies, particularly when it was what they wanted to hear. For she was not twenty-eight, she was only twenty-five, and as for knowing India, she’d only played there innocently as a child, before what had happened. She knew it about as well as she knew the far side of the moon.
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