Monsoon Summer by Julia Gregson Read Free Book Online Page A

needed rescue. He didn’t. He filed all such conversations in his mind under Indya : press button one and you got reams of stuff from the ex-colonials about the railways and the ungratefulness; or the rhapsodies about the sunsets! the spirituality! the smells! and not forgetting, ah! the cow dust and the fires, the spices! Add in the rifle dust and you had Parfum de Partition.
    In the hallway, she picked up his briefcase. “I can take this,” she said, leaving the heavier ones for him. He almost blushed, conscious of the packet of French letters scattered amongst the few shirts, his cigarettes, the Catholic missal his mother had packed with the note inside saying, “Don’t forget your prayers.”
    The condoms were standard issue for red-blooded medical students, but for him an invitation to a dance full of complications.
    Walking upstairs in the glow of the lamplight, he did his best to ignore the slim ankles, the straight line of her stocking, the silk sway of her dark hair: women were off limits now that he was going home. To make this absolutely clear to himself, he’d gone back to Downside the week before and spoken in great confusion to his moral tutor, Father Damian: a dear, fat old man with a great sense of humor, who had made his life so much better during his four years there.
    Over a glass of port in the book-lined study, he’d started withthe smaller sin first: he was too addicted to going to the cinema, and it was time spent away from his PhD. “Well.” Father Damian had taken a sip, bunched his eyebrows judiciously. “Exactly how many hours a week do you donate to this pastime?”
    â€œSometimes a whole afternoon.”
    â€œAnd what proportion of the week do you devote to your studies?”
    Anto thought about this. “It depends if I have lectures or tutorials.”
    â€œInclude both in the sum.”
    â€œMaybe sixty hours. I have to get my doctorate before I go home.”
    â€œI think God may forgive you for a little time off.” Father ­Damian’s smile was dry and fond. “And working too hard is another sin, you know. But I hope,” the monk added with a sly look, “you have the intellectual rigor to watch Eisenstein, and not a lot of old tosh. I do worry about your cultural bearings; remember our night at the opera?”
    Anto had never been allowed to forget it: the excruciating performance of Madame Butterfly during his first term at the school. His eardrums so punctured by the foreign screeching, he’d sat, hands over his ears, wanting to howl like a dog.
    But films were different. A drug, a way of forgetting and finding yourself inside the big faces on the screen. He’d sat in the dark avidly noticing the details: the manners of the handsome men up there, their ways of smoking, of greeting women, of leaving rooms, and later, this close attention had led to him becoming a clever mimic who could make other boys laugh.
    Towards the end of this pleasant meeting, Father Damian wondered if there was something else troubling him, and if there was, he might take advantage of his time here and go to confession. Half an hour later, he’d knelt in the old school chapel and, breathing in the smells of incense and old velvet, blurted out his confusion and pain.
    During the past two years, he’d slept with two women, out oflust, not love. One of them, a student nurse at Barts, a nice girl, fair-haired, ethereal-looking, had fallen in love with him and been badly hurt when he couldn’t return the feeling.
    The other, a worldly WAAF, boyfriend in France, had hurt him by saying afterwards, “I’ve always wanted to sleep with a foreign man,” making him feel like an exotic pet allowed for one moment into the sitting room.
    With his lips close to the grille, he gave an abridged version of these events and, in the silence that followed, felt the familiar cold breath of the chapel floor.
    The priest coughed