Dreams of Rivers and Seas Page 31

  Paul studied his heavy form in the reflection of the glass door. There was the familiar unfamiliarity of the mirrored face: that strange, plump, rather debonair man! His hair was greying just a little at the temples but still thick, still virile. It will be good to try this different life in Helen’s company, he muttered. He liked the way the older woman’s constant irony challenged him. He would enjoy proving to her that he could handle harsh conditions. I will lose weight. Perhaps at some unconscious level, it suddenly occurred to Paul, what had most drawn him to Albert James’s ideas was the implicit invitation to professional suicide: convinced, as James clearly was, that journalism’s interminable assertiveness was ugly, that it was futile seeking to sway people’s minds, to convince them of this and that, you could relax and give up. Paul was aware that he always tried very hard to persuade people, in professional matters and private. He was aware, too, of trying to seduce readers when he wrote. He needed them to succumb to his way of seeing things. And he was ambitious. In the end, his whole life had been an attempt to put himself forward by convincing people of things. It didn’t really matter what things. That was what had so impressed him about Gandhi, the man’s ability to convince people. And that was what James no doubt hated about him. If you free yourself from that compulsion, Paul suddenly thought, if you escape from that need to cajole and convince and seduce, what is left afterwards will be you, your true self.

  The lobby of the International Centre was quiet this evening and the PC under the stairs was free. Paul remembered it from years before when he’d been working for the Globe; the connection was slow and the keyboard sticky. He remembered having to wait while others hogged the thing. The elderly receptionist watched politely while the American paced and hovered in his damp jacket.

  ‘No problem if you want to get online, sir,’ she eventually suggested. She was clipping bits of paper together.

  ‘I’m not actually staying at the Centre,’ Paul told her.

  ‘That’s no problem, sir, if you are waiting for a guest.’

  Paul went to the machine but hesitated. Amy would have written of course. He had always had a great time with Amy, but there was no question of asking her to come and join him in Bihar.

  Still hesitating, Paul found his cigarettes and lit up. Albert James had thought every action determining and potentially fatal: every step a person took was irreversible, every experience was carved in stone. In my case, relationships are just water off a duck’s back, Paul thought. He inhaled deeply. Compulsive though it might be, no one would ever persuade him to stop smoking.

  There was an ashtray on a fancy iron stand beside the typing stool. Paul turned the cigarette round gently to free the burning tip. He liked doing that. You could always write to your mother, he chuckled, tell your mum that her bad boy is going to do some charity work. That would cheer the old girl up! But why was it still important what his parents thought? At my age! Or was everyone, he wondered, just waiting for a chance to reverse roles and shout how good they’d been?

  Very conscious of being the older man waiting for a pretty younger woman in a hotel lobby, Paul smiled with half of his mouth. For a moment, standing at the bottom of the stairs by the computer screen, he had an impression of himself as exactly poised between his old, confident, hard-working, womanising self and someone entirely cut loose and ascetic: a slimmer, calmer, quieter, no doubt better Paul, in a muddy village, dutifully doing what Helen James told him to do, taking this remarkable woman as his model, learning from her vast experience. He would wash people who were sick. He would smell their vomit and shit. Later you can write about it, he told himself more candidly; then your work will have an authenticity it has never really had perhaps. Then they will have to take you seriously. He had always been thought of as a journeyman, an opportunist. After an experience like this he would be more convincing.

  Paul looked at his watch and wondered if Elaine was showering or changing into nicer clothes. He rather liked the childish way she tugged at an ear, and that intense twist on her lips when she had jabbed out a text message. Deciding at last to sit down at the computer, he tried to imagine the economic consequences if he earned no money for a whole year.

  The screen was the old cathode variety. Paul called up Gmail and had just typed in his address and password when there came a squeak of rubber soles hurrying down the cement stairs.

  ‘Sorry to be so long.’

  ‘No problem.’

  It was clear at a glance that much of Elaine’s time must have been spent trying to freshen her face after tears. She was wearing a knee-length skirt, but with trainers.

  ‘Feeling better?’ Paul asked encouragingly, then shouted, ‘Aaaagh, forty-three messages, not possible!’

  ‘If you want to finish your work, I’ll read something,’ she offered.

  Scrolling down, Paul saw Amy’s name a half-dozen times.

  ‘We’d be here till tomorrow,’ he said. He logged off. ‘Let’s eat.’

  As can happen in India, the Centre’s dining room was so fiercely air-conditioned they both feared they would freeze. So while they waited for the food they’d ordered Elaine went back to her room for a jacket. When she returned, not only the jacket was new, but she was wearing perfume too. A sweet, girly perfume, Paul noticed. ‘And I brought a scarf for you,’ she said smiling. She handed him a square of pink silk. The determination to be cheerful only made her anxiety more obvious.

  ‘I’m not sure this will be good for my reputation,’ Paul laughed, gamely wrapping the scarf round his neck. The air was definitely chilly.

  ‘And what is your reputation?’

  ‘Hmm, probably best if I don’t tell.’

  ‘The pink goes pretty well with the brown shirt,’ Elaine told him. ‘They suit.’

  ‘Pretty’s the word, I’m afraid,’ he said tying a knot. He grimaced. ‘Still, I suppose the effeminate look is in these days.’

  She narrowed her eyes. ‘You don’t look effeminate at all,’ she said. Then a message beeped on her phone. She read it and again hastened to answer with small quick fingers. Paul saw that the nails were bitten right down. She held the phone up to her face with two hands.

  After the food arrived, chewing the first mouthful, she asked: ‘Tell me about being a writer, then, Paul.’ She used his name rather determinedly, as if she was afraid she might forget it. ‘I’ve never met a writer before. Tell me about this book about John’s dad.’

  ‘I thought I’d said, I’ve decided not to do it,’ Paul said.

  ‘Oh, right.’ She was pensive again. ‘John will be disappointed.’

  ‘Anyway, there’s precious little one can say about being a writer. In the end one form of megalomania is much like another.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ She frowned, apparently eager for a serious debate.

  ‘Oh, people looking for celebrity,’ he shrugged. ‘Writers, actors, we’re all the same.’

  ‘I don’t think so at all,’ she protested. ‘The actors I know—’

  Suddenly she looked down at her plate and her cheeks stiffened as if her tongue had found something unpleasant in her mouth. ‘Actually, I’ve just given up a project too.’

  Paul waited while she ate another mouthful. He was not unfamiliar with the picture of a young woman going through a crisis. In the past such girls had been easy prey; they grabbed at anyone who would bolster their self-esteem.

  ‘I walked out of rehearsals two days ago.’ Elaine’s voice was steady but brittle. ‘It was going to be my first play. My big ambition.’

  He watched her. ‘So why did you do that?’

  Again Elaine tugged at an ear, head cocked to one side. She seemed unaware how childish the gesture was. ‘We’d been rehearsing for months and I still couldn’t do anything right. At least as the director saw it. I suppose it got to the point where I couldn’t take any more criticism.’ She gave a forced smile. ‘So, I lost my boyfriend and my job in the same week. How about that?’

  ‘Double whammy,�
�� Paul agreed.

  ‘He said I was never really the part, I was just playing it. Just mimicking. He thought people wouldn’t be able to identify, as if I was making fun of the play.’ She managed half a smile: ‘Actually it is a pretty stupid story.’

  ‘“He” meaning this director fellow?’

  ‘Hanyaki. He’s Japanese. He says I decided to be an actress just so people could see how good I was at mimicking characters I was superior to.’

  ‘And that isn’t how you feel about it, obviously.’

  ‘You don’t go to drama school,’ Elaine said, ‘for two years spending hours and hours in classes to show off that you can mimic.’

  The girl was on the brink of tears again. Paul poured some wine for her. ‘And now you’re in India,’ he said brightly.

  ‘I walked out in the middle of rehearsal. Three days ago. Next morning I went straight to the Indian Embassy to queue for a visa.’

  ‘Well, walking out takes courage. Not to mention getting on a long-haul flight.’

  ‘More like desperation,’ she said. She laughed nervously. The girl had shown no particular interest, Paul thought, in the Indian menu, no surprise at the arrangements in the large low dining hall, the characteristic Indian sounds and smells. He felt sorry for her. She couldn’t have been more out of place.

  ‘Well, sometimes you have to act on impulse,’ he said philosophically. ‘Actually, that’s pretty much what it felt like when I decided to give up the book. It was a decision I had to take, even though I’d been so excited about writing the thing.’

  She pushed her plate aside. ‘I’m sorry, to be honest, all I’m thinking about is where John is.’ In a rush, she added: ‘Actually, he’d asked me to marry him. I know, it’s crazy, isn’t it? It really freaked me out. A few months ago. When he was here for the funeral actually. Now I was coming to say yes, I mean I’ve gradually got used to the idea, I wanted to appear at his mum’s door and tell him yes, when he least expected it, and then when I arrive he’s not even here! And he lied to me about where he was.’

  Paul saw the confusion in her eyes. He sighed. ‘That’s really too bad, because it would have made a lovely story.’ He waited a moment. He must get the girl thinking rather than just suffering. ‘So why exactly would he have come out here?’ he eventually asked. ‘I mean, his mother wasn’t ill or anything. You say he had a research position that was important for him. I don’t get it. But then, frankly, I don’t get why he’d have said he was coming if he wasn’t.’

  Elaine looked down at her fingers. ‘He’d turned moody.’ She said, ‘I don’t know.’

  She shook her head. ‘Want to hear something strange? I can mimic almost anyone, honestly, I’ve always been able to, but I can’t mimic John. I never could. It’s as if I can’t really … grasp him. You know? Perhaps that means I love him. Do you think?’ She smiled sadly. ‘And I’ve seen his mother, what, ten minutes, and I could imitate her forever.’

  Paul watched the girl. When their eyes met he raised an eyebrow. ‘Go on, then.’

  ‘What? Imitate her?’

  ‘Why not? Might be more fun than crying.’

  ‘Right.’

  Elaine thought for a moment. She closed her eyes and sat very still. Then her face smoothed a little and somehow ceased to be lopsided. The lips straightened and thinned, the eyes opened a little wider, the nose was sterner, more pointed, the shoulders rose above the table and spread. In a completely changed voice, brusquer, deeper, more upper class, she said: ‘There is really a lot of work to do, I’m afraid, at the clinic, heavens, I’m late!, we are so short-staffed, but Elaine dear, not to worry, I’m sure this is all just a little communication glitch. Let me phone for a cab, shall I? Hello? Helen James here. Yes. That’s right. Opposite Lodhi Gardens.’ She said a few words of fluent gobbledegook, vaguely Hindi. ‘Now, yes, if you don’t mind, as soon as possible, there are people counting on me, thank you, thank you that’s very kind.’ Then, as if calling from a distance: ‘Paul will sort you out, won’t you Paul? Do make sure Elaine finds a decent hotel, then we’ll tackle the problem of John tomorrow.’

  Paul burst out laughing. ‘Fantastic! You’ve got her to a tee. I can’t believe you only saw her once.’ Simultaneously, he recalled Helen as she had been this afternoon, distraught, convulsed, then immediately composed again when the doorbell rang. It was reassuring, he thought, that however upset she might be, Helen James was not the sort of woman who would ever ask to be looked after; she would never make you feel guilty.

  ‘You’ve got a real talent,’ he encouraged the girl.

  ‘But that’s exactly what Hanyaki hated! You see. He said it was too obvious and I was condescending to the person I mimicked. He thought I had a superiority complex. I sort of pointed at them, rather than really being them.’

  Paul wondered if the girl was more upset about her job situation or her boyfriend. ‘Maybe it’s just a problem with this director,’ he reassured her. ‘Some actors have that, I’ve heard.’ Then on instinct he asked. ‘It wasn’t the guy John thought you were having the affair with?’

  Elaine stared. ‘How did you know?’

  Paul shrugged. The girl had put down her knife and fork and lifted her hands to her cheeks. There was something very underage about the bitten nails. Then, rather deliberately, Elaine looked around the restaurant. ‘How elegant the fat women are!’ she said. With conscious aplomb she mimed the gesture of tossing a shawl over her shoulder, wobbling her head a little, Indian fashion. Immediately she seemed adult, even old. And I thought she wasn’t looking, Paul thought.

  Elaine turned back to her food. A moment later, she told him: ‘The strange thing with John’s family, you know, was that though they never phoned or emailed and hardly ever saw each other, he was incredibly attached. He was always talking about them. I mean, like I never would with mine. Nobody could ever meet John without knowing inside two minutes that he was Albert James’s son. And his mother too. He was so proud of them. That’s why I was sure he’d be here.’

  Paul agreed it was strange. ‘Would you like to go into town,’ he asked, ‘if the rain has eased?’

  ‘And I feel so stupid,’ Elaine protested. ‘Like, if I’d behaved just a bit differently, just a bit, or, I mean, if I’d seen it coming, you know, him running off, if I’d had any idea, none of this would have happened. None of it.’

  ‘If people saw things coming,’ Paul consoled her, ‘we wouldn’t have any history, would we?’

  In that split second it occurred to him that this must have been Albert James’s project in the end: to have no more history.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  TONIGHT WOULD NOT be an ordinary night. Helen was not so blind she could not see a change of colour in the air, a change of weather. But nothing was decided. She sat in her taxi looking at the havoc left by the storm, the broken branches, fallen signposts, spilled rubbish. She watched the rain teeming on the mess, dogs skulking about blocked drains. She had seen it all before. She thought of nothing and at the same time she knew the night would be full of thoughts. She should not have spoken so openly to Paul. A line of defence had been swept away. An army of regrets was preparing the final assault. Go on regardless, Helen told herself.

  She paid the driver outside the clinic and, as usual when on night duty, signed in a full hour early. She performed a series of reassuringly mechanical actions. She removed her shoes, opened her surgery and put on her hospital clothes, her work slippers. She checked the admissions register, went to the ward and walked between the beds, nodding to those she knew, checking the records of those she didn’t, listening to the afternoon nurse, a middle-aged Muslim woman who was angry with visitors bringing in food and making a mess.

  ‘We must be having some discipline in here!’ the nurse insisted. ‘You please speak to them, Dr James; if you could remind them of our regulations.’

  Helen noticed that Than-Htay was in a bed this evening.

  ‘He has been coughing,’ the nurse said. She lowered her
voice, ‘Blood.’

  The boy followed Helen with his eyes but didn’t speak.

  She went to the noisy Hindu family with their assortment of sweets and cards for a sick auntie. She smiled and they fell silent.

  ‘Good evening, madam,’ one of them said.

  In a quiet voice, Helen reminded them of the rules, the visiting hours, the number of friends and family members permitted, what could and could not be brought into the ward.

  ‘Very sorry, madam,’ the oldest of the group began at once.

  ‘We are leaving only,’ another promised.

  ‘It is my fault, madam,’ the sick woman said. ‘Today it is the anniversary of my poor husband’s decease and we were saying puja for him.’

  The nurse shook her head as the family bundled out of the door, laughing and hushing each other. ‘They were just rude to me,’ she complained.

  ‘I’ll send you someone to sweep up,’ Helen said.

  She went back to outpatients now and watched as an elderly doctor in a white cap distributed pills and gave injections to those who came to the clinic after their day’s work. Not many had turned up, he said, in this weather. A boy who had lost an arm looked away and talked loudly while his stump was medicated. There were strong smells of damp clothing and disinfectant. Helen went off to have tea with Martin, the Dutch aid worker, who told her about a case sent on to them by a local state hospital during the afternoon. The woman had cancer of the bowel. The state doctors had opened her up to operate, taken one look, sewed her up again and sent her here to die.

  Helen liked Martin. She liked his Dutch accent, his seriousness. She noticed he seemed reluctant to head off home after his hours were done. Perhaps he would like to meet Elaine, she thought. He could show her the city. She would not think of John. If his girlfriend didn’t know where her son was, she certainly didn’t. Obviously he didn’t want anyone to know. Helen fervently hoped he was not in Delhi. There is nothing for John in Delhi, she thought. He is much better off far away from me.