Page 44 of Six Days in Bombay

“Why would I?” My voice carried the resentment of twenty years. I finished my scotch in one gulp.

His gaze went to my empty glass. “That might be the point.” He looked at me. “In any case, yours is quite the expensive excursion, dear girl.”

“I have some money…from my father.” I told him about the annual gift and handed him the pouch of money.

He counted it. Then he gazed at me over his specs. “Not nearly enough, I’m afraid. Unless you plan to outsmart the train conductors.”

In less than a minute, my plan had gone from possible to absurd. I felt ridiculous. The night Mum and I had counted the money, it had felt like the kind of windfall Indira’s husband was always chasing at the horse races. Why had I ever thought this could work?

The doctor drained his glass. He looked tired. “Let’s put me to bed, Nurse Falstaff. We’ll have better ideas in the morning. Oh, and drink two glasses of water before you go to sleep tonight, my girl. Trust me.”

***

The next morning, I came to Dr. Stoddard’s cabin to help him get ready for the day. When I’d awakened, I felt as if I had cotton balls in my mouth and in my brain. I’d already thrown up twice. My head hurt.

“Feeling a little raw, are we?” His eyes twinkled. He was knitting, a fluffy ball of pale blue yarn spinning on his lap blanket. My jaw dropped—I’d never seen a man knit before. He was neither embarrassed nor startled by my reaction. “It’s for my granddaughter.”

His fingers deftly moved the stitches from one knitting needle onto another, completing another row. The backside of a sweater was almost done. He must have been knitting all the while we’d been on the ship and never let on. He stuck the needles in the ball of yarn and said, “We’re playing tonight. In the Music Room.”

I pulled the covers back so he could swing his legs to the side. “You and I?”

“Among others.” He leaned on me to help him to the bath. “Wear something fetching.”

I cocked my head. “You mean my nurse’s uniform with a cap or my nurse’s uniform with a cap?”

“Very funny. Now leave me to my bath.”

* * *

At nine in the evening, I wheeled Dr. Stoddard toward the Music Room. It was an elegant drawing room with Persian rugs, chairs, even a fireplace. There was a piano next to the fireplace, a harp at the far end of the room and a windup gramophone near the door. As far as I knew, Dr. Stoddard didn’t play a musical instrument. So what were we doing here? I asked him.

“Oh, stop fussing, girl!” he said.

I wheeled him into the Music Room. The club chairs, which were clustered around small tables whenever I’d walked by this room, had been rearranged around a mahogany table. At the head sat the captain. The other gentlemen—prosperous-looking men with vests and watch chains and jowls—were ones I’d seen at his dinner table most nights. Each held a hand of cards. Cigar smoke swirled upward toward the ornamental plaster ceiling. A pile of pound notes was scattered in the middle of the table.

“Doctor!” greeted the captain. “Never seen you here before. Welcome, welcome. I believe you know everyone.”

Not once did the captain look at me. I was invisible the way the Indian deckhands were invisible, the way the Indian chambermaids were invisible. He’d tolerated my presence at his dinner table, but only because it would have been impolitic not to.

I drew the wheelchair up to the table. Dr. Stoddard patted the club chair next to him. I looked at him in panic. It was one thing to sit at the captain’s dinner table but quite another to play cards with men of industry.

Dr. Stoddard addressed the group with a charming smile. “Bloody eyes aren’t what they used to be. Nurse here—” he leaned into the table confidentially “—not too clever, mind you, but does her best.” He sat back in the wheelchair. “Don’t mind, chaps, do you? I’ll be her bank. Oh—” he signaled to the server in the room. “A glass of port. There’s a good man.”

The men eyed one another and mumbled their assent. I was appalled and more than a little hurt at his remark about me notbeing up to snuff. The last time the doctor and I played I’d won every game. He’d even congratulated me on how quickly and how far I’d come. “Are you sure you haven’t picked up my bad habits, Nurse?”

I raised an eyebrow. “You mean cheating? And so obviously, Doctor? Even a child could have sussed you out.” I’d become bolder with him ever since I learned he enjoyed the occasional sparring.

The corners of his eyes crinkled when he smiled. “Touché, my girl. Touché.” His eyes lingered on mine a second longer, and I felt the gentleness of it—the love a father might give his daughter. Something I’d been missing in my life. I felt heat behind my eyes and looked away.

Now here he was telling everyone they may as well steal money from him as long as I was at the table. I felt my chest constrict in anger even as I kept my expression bland.

The doctor leaned toward me and lowered his voice while the captain dealt a new hand. His blue eyes bore into mine. “Just as I’ve taught you. There’s a good girl.”

Dr. Stoddard placed a wager. My fingers trembled. My hands were moist. I rubbed them against my apron, worried the cards would slip out of my hands. I could feel beads of sweat on my brow. The men could see I was nervous. I caught their smug expressions, their sly looks at one another.

The captain threw money in the center of the table. “Won’t be long now before we learn what happened to the Hindenburg.”

“My wife says her cousin was lucky to have survived.” This from a gentleman with a scar on this left cheek. “What a disaster!” He lay a shilling on the table.

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