dust down the drive, she went up to her bedroom. It looked different already—the servants had been in during the reception, straightened the eiderdown on Rose’s bed, polished her table, and tidied all traces of her away. Tor lay down in her bridesmaid’s dress on Rose’s bed. She closed her eyes, and slept fitfully for about half an hour, dimly aware of the shouts and laughter of Ci’s guests in the distance, the clatter of dishes being taken away.
When she woke up, she went to the window, and watched the sun go down over the sea, and felt homesick for the first time since she’d arrived, a sense of the vastness of India all around her, of millions and millions of people not known to her out there having babies and dying and living and of herself being an unimportant little speck living on the wrong side of the world.
She took off her damp bridesmaid’s dress and went back to bed in her underwear. She pulled the sheet over her head and was almost asleep when she heard Ci shouting at her from the bottom of the stairs.
“Tor, come and play with me. I’m having a drink on the veranda.”
“Coming,” Tor shouted back reluctantly. She didn’t dare say no, but she still felt shy on her own with Ci Ci.
She got dressed and went downstairs. Ci was lying in the half-dark in a kimono on a wicker lounger; a cigarette drooped from a languid hand.
“I’m a rag,” she said. “How are you?”
She must have noticed Tor had been crying for she pushed a glass of brandy toward her. They sat drinking together while the servants cleared away the wreckage of the day. Then Ci Ci said out of the blue, “Most Bombay weddings are damp squibs, darling. But she’ll be happy by now.” She smiled at her slyly. “He’s a wonderful-looking man.”
Tor looked at her. “I don’t like him,” she said. “I think he’s…”
“Think he’s what?” Ci sounded impatient.
“Cold,” said Tor bravely. “I kept wanting him to look happier.”
“What a silly thing to say, darling,” Ci protested. “None of us even know him.” As if that proved anything. “And besides,” she added, “most people aren’t exactly childhood sweethearts when they marry out here.”
An awkward pause followed, they both took sips of their drinks, and then Ci stubbed out her cigarette and took Tor’s hand in hers. She ran her fingernails along the palm of Tor’s hand, and said lightly, “Might a chap say something? This is probably as good a time as any.”
“Of course.”
“Don’t be too fussy, darling; I’d hate to have to send you home a returned empty.”
Tor winced. Ci laughed as if she was half joking, but Tor knew she wasn’t.
Ci put a fresh cigarette in her holder, lit it, and as the smoke cleared, gave her a long appraising look.
“Darling,” she said after a longish pause, “would you mind if I was incredibly frank with you? Because I think I could help you if you’d let me.”
“Of course.” Tor steeled herself for the worst.
“You’re a big girl, aren’t you, but you don’t have to be if you don’t want to be. All it would take would be no cake for two weeks, lemon and water in the morning, and I rather think,” Ci stretched out and held a lump of Tor’s hair in her hand, “we need a hair conversation with Madame Fontaine. With half an inch off this, you’ll be fighting them off with a stick. Do you want to fight them off with a stick?”
“Yes,” said Tor, and even though at this precise moment she felt she could have died of shame, she made herself smile. “I rather think I do.”
But then, the following night, something amazing happened. Ci Ci walked into Tor’s room with Pandit behind her, his arms piled high with bright silk dresses, beaded shifts, shawls of shivery softness, headbands, feathers, necklaces, even earrings. Ci took the clothes from his arms and flung them carelessly on the bed.
“Darling, do me a favor and keep these,” she said. “I need an excuse to buy some new clothes.”
“I couldn’t!” Tor, still smarting from the conversation the night before, felt both thrilled and shamed.
“Why not?” Ci Ci said. “New toys are much more fun, and some of these are just un peu mouton.”
For the next two hours Ci, smoking and squinting, watched Tor try on the clothes. Apart from the few hems that needed taking down and waists out, some of the dresses fit perfectly