East of the Sun Read Free

Tor, feeling the perfumed bones of her mother sitting so unusually close to her, was surprised to feel another stab of sorrow.
    This felt so exactly like the kind of outing a happy mother and daughter might have had, if she hadn’t been so difficult; a father left at home with a plate of sandwiches, the “girls” up in town for the day.
    From the top of the bus she could see the vast bowl of London spreading out to the horizon: splendid shops with mannequins in the window, interesting people—already a much bigger world.
    Bars of sunlight fell across her mother’s face as she leaned to look out of the window. The blue feather in her hat wiggled like a live thing.
    “Darling, do look!” she said. “There’s the Ritz—oh God, I’ve missed London,” she breathed. And all the way down Piccadilly she pointed out what she called “some smart waterholes” (when Mother got excited her English let her down), places she and Daddy had eaten in when they had money, before Tor was born: Capriati’s, the In and Out—“dreadful chef”—the Café Royal.
    Tor heard a couple of shopgirls behind them titter and repeat, “dreadful chef.”
    But for once, she told herself she didn’t give a damn—she was going to India in two weeks’ time. When you’re smiling, When you’re smiling, The whole world smiles with you.
    “Darling,” her mother pinched her, “don’t hum in public, it’s dreadfully common.”
     
    They’d arrived at the riding department at Swan & Edgar. Her mother, who prided herself on knowing the key assistants, asked for the services of a Madame Duval, a widow, she explained to Tor, who’d fallen on hard times and whom she remembered from the old days.
    “We’re looking for some decent summer jods,” her mother had drawled unnecessarily to the doorman on the ground floor, “for the tailors in Bombay to copy.”
    Upstairs, Tor mentally rolled her eyes as Madame Duval, removing pins from her mouth, complimented Mrs. Sowerby on how girlish and slim she still looked. She watched her mother dimple and pass on her famous much-repeated advice about lemon juice and tiny portions. Tor had been forced to follow this starvation diet herself, all through the season, when her mother had only agreed to buy her dresses in a size too small so as to blackmail her into thinness. Sometimes she thought her mother wanted to slim her out of existence altogether: their fiercest row—they’d almost come to blows—was when her mother had found her one night, after another disastrous party where nobody had asked her to dance, wolfing down half a loaf of white bread and jam in the summer house.
    That was the night when her mother, who could be mean in several languages, had introduced her to the German word Kummerspeck for the kind of fat that settles on people who usefood to buck themselves up. “It means sad fat,” she’d said, “and it describes you now.”
    “Right now I’ve got the larger size.” Jolly Madame Duval had returned with a flapping pair of jods. “These might fit. Are we off to some gymkhanas this summer?”
    “No,” Tor’s mother as usual answered for her. “She’s off to India, aren’t you, Victoria?”
    “Yes.” She was gazing over their heads at her reflection in the mirror. I’m huge, she was thinking, and fat.
    “How lovely, India!” Madame Duval beamed at her mother. “Quite an adventure. Lucky girl!”
    Her mother had decided to be fun. “Yes, it’s très amusant, ” she told her. “When these girls go out they call them the Fishing Club because there are so many handsome young men out there.”
    “No, Mother,” corrected Tor, “they call us the Fishing Fleet.”
    Her mother ignored her. “And the ones who can’t find men there,” her mother gave Tor a naughty look with a hint of challenge in it, “are called returned empties.”
    “Oh, that’s not very nice,” said Madame Duval, and then not too convincingly, “but that won’t happen to your