Dreams of Rivers and Seas

by Tim Parks

  Paul grinned. ‘I accept. Waiter!’ he called. He asked the young man if they served alcoholic drinks.

  ‘Of course, sir.’

  ‘Excellent!’ He turned to Helen. ‘What will you have?’

  She gave in: ‘A gin and tonic.’

  ‘But we only serve the alcohol with Sunday brunch, sir,’ the waiter said. ‘We are only having a licence for Sunday brunch.’

  ‘Well serve us Sunday brunch!’

  ‘But it is not Sunday, sir.’

  Paul laughed. ‘Okay, I’ll have another coffee.’

  But Helen James said no, she knew where they could get a drink. ‘And you can call me Helen,’ she told him.

  ‘We met at a dinner organised by friends in North London. Finsbury Park. I remember the walk from the Tube. I was working in Casualty, in the Royal Free. Hampstead. It was my first job.’

  Helen had taken the American to the garden of the India International Centre. Paul had stayed here once himself. She was drinking vodka, he Scotch. ‘Two hours,’ she repeated. The place was pleasantly flowery, quietly busy. Two or three acquaintances had nodded to her. It was now more than six weeks since Albert had died.

  ‘I was very political in those days. I still am. Access to medicine has always been as important to me as medicine itself. Everybody was arguing public against private, it was the big question then, either or, nobody thought of a mix, and Albert was sitting quietly, saying nothing. You only noticed him really because he was so tall and trying to hide it, stooping, sitting on his hands and so on. Then quite suddenly he said something like: If the charming young lady is truly anxious about people who get no treatment, logically she should be in Botswana, not Hampstead. And if the young gentlemen are truly convinced of the perversity of state medicine, they might want to take the first flight to Dallas.’

  Paul smiled. ‘As if he were some kind of referee?’

  ‘Albert always stayed outside a discussion then suddenly commented on it. He’d just define positions, usually making them sound a bit naïve, then step back again. It could be quite offensive.’

  ‘So, he wasn’t just pure and good.’

  ‘He was out of it.’ She shrugged: ‘Being good is often an offence in itself.’

  ‘Surely, the person being good was you. He just had no personal interest in either side of the argument.’

  ‘As you like.’

  ‘But he was interested in you.’

  ‘It took a little while …’ Helen stopped. ‘But to go back to that conversation: I told him that actually yes, I was looking into the possibility of voluntary service.’

  ‘You had already planned to go abroad, then?’

  Her eyes clouded. ‘Yes, yes I had. I wanted to. But let’s say it became more real after I had said it to Albert. So, a year later we married and, as you probably know, left at once for Kenya …’

  ‘Hang on!’ Paul raised a hand. ‘You can’t just jump ahead like that. How did you become lovers, how did you get married, how was it you decided to go to Kenya?’

  ‘We married in a registry office.’

  ‘I know that. Please, can’t you give me just some idea of this courtship. Were there love letters? Did you have to break off other, er, engagements?’

  Helen looked at the man. Paul returned her gaze. Her face was oval, attentive, and the eyes, catching the evening light, glinted. He couldn’t make her out. Meanwhile, white-liveried waiters moved with slow Indian formality between the tables where the Delhi well-to-do sat in their colourful saris, sipped their cocktails and spoke with complacent animation.

  ‘The first time we went out,’ she eventually said, ‘he asked me to some classical concert, Albert loved classical music, but I had a political meeting to go to. In the end he picked me up from home, drove me to my meeting, then went on to the concert himself, and we met again afterwards so he could take me home. I remember my mother was most impressed when he came to pick me up because she thought this man was taking me to hear serious music, and of course Albert had a sort of lanky academic look.’ Helen laughed. ‘We did that a lot. It saved me saying where I was really going. My parents used to give me a lot of stick about my politics.’

  Paul shook his head. ‘And then?’

  ‘We married and went to Kenya.’

  ‘Before exchanging kisses?’

  Helen sighed. ‘Albert was a wonderful man. That is all I will say.’

  Paul bit the inside of his lip and narrowed his eyes.

  ‘As I was saying, we were in touch with a local organisation that was eager to extend medical treatment beyond the urban area. Infectious diseases were the main concern. The idea was that we would establish a treatment and vaccination centre a couple of hundred miles east of Nairobi with a van to take medicines to the villages. Albert would run lab tests on the main diseases. I would be doing the direct work with the people.’

  ‘But of the two of you, who was it who really decided to go?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have gone without him.’

  ‘I’m not sure I understand.’

  She seemed to reflect. ‘Albert was the tenderest of men. Actually, I sometimes thought he was unnaturally tender. But he seemed to like the fact that I was brusque and practical.’

  ‘Perhaps unnaturally brusque and practical.’

  Helen laughed. ‘Some people have said that. Anyway, what I’m saying is that he encouraged me, but he liked to stay in the background. He was enthusiastic about going, but maybe more to be away from England, or from his family, or just to watch me doing what I was determined to do. I don’t know. Sometimes you thought a decision was yours, then months later you felt Albert had coaxed you to it, just by being there watching you.’

  Again her eyes caught the light. She reached up and fiddled with the tie holding her hair. It was honey hair streaked with grey. The tie was green. When she’d got it right, she said in a completely changed voice, ‘Order another drink.’

  The American obeyed at once.

  ‘And how was the work in Kenya?’

  ‘There’s nothing to say except that there was an extraordinary amount of it; an endless stream of people with every kind of complaint, and, as always in these places, every kind of political problem, every kind of obstacle, incomprehension, cussedness: gangs trying to get a cut and to control how we allocated the few beds we had, trying to tell us who we could work with and who we couldn’t. It was always uphill. We were always exhausted.’

  ‘And how did Albert feel about it? I mean, his background was scientific research, not medical work.’

  The drinks arrived. Helen swallowed half of hers at once. ‘I hate the crows in this country,’ she announced. The birds were settling on the lawn as darkness fell. ‘Albert had an intellectual approach. He worked out of curiosity, not for the work itself. The side he enjoyed most was learning the language. I never knew anyone who could pick up so much speaking so little. He was a sponge. He even wanted us to use Swahili at home, when I could barely say, Where does it hurt? He always loved to use local languages, even when he was guessing most of the time. And he always spoke everything with a strong English accent.’

  ‘So it was learning languages that he began to shift away from aid work to anthropology.’

  ‘Could be.’ Helen looked away across the centre’s garden. Her chin dipped. ‘The truth was’ – she turned back and picked up her drink – ‘the truth was Albert always mocked me. In a way. He admired me … and he mocked me.’

  Helen James burst into nervous laughter. ‘There, I’ve said something you didn’t expect, Mr Biographer. I loved him deeply and he mocked me, he encouraged me and mocked me. Now. Enough. I don’t want you to write this book. You couldn’t capture Albert. On the other hand,’ and now she smiled more sanely, ‘it would be very nice if you would take me out to dinner … sir.’

  ‘I’ll call a cab,’ Paul said.

  They talked about India now. If the caste system was far less rigid, the underlying mentality was intact, she thought, and sanctio
ned every form of inequality. Likewise the mad idea that you were reincarnated in the form you deserved.

  ‘Albert loved the caste complications; which group eats what and wears what clothes on which occasions. I just can’t be bothered. I’ve tried to learn the stories of their gods, but it never sinks in: Parvati, Shiva cutting off Ganesh’s head, Garuda, Shesa. I don’t know how anyone can take such a ragbag seriously. You can see where Bollywood came from. Albert adored it, all the myths and stupid fanfare. But he never submitted his mind to it. He mocked that too in the end.’

  She had taken the American to a place in Vasant Vihar where they climbed three flights of stairs to a bare room with tables too close together and food simple and spicy. Paul was struck by her appetite. She had ordered mutton and beer. It was as if she had suddenly remembered how to eat and drink. She was a handsome woman, he thought. The hair was still thick. She held her shoulders well back, the breasts were full. And she seemed to do everything with so much purpose: eating, drinking. It was clinical, almost brutal.

  ‘I always found India exhilarating and brutal,’ he suddenly said. ‘I’m always glad I’ve come, you know, but gladder still to go home. When I get out of the plane stateside I feel a fantastic sense of relief.’

  ‘You get over that,’ she told him, ‘after a few years.’

  ‘And you don’t think of home at all?’

  ‘You mean England? From time to time. But there would be no point in going back.’

  ‘There would be your son.’

  She hardly seemed to notice he had said this. ‘Why don’t you tell me about your next wife?’ she asked. ‘I presume there’s another on the way.’

  Paul laughed. ‘Now who’s impertinent?’

  ‘I don’t plan to write a book about it, do I? Anyway, you make it fairly obvious you’re a sensual man.’

  ‘I do?’

  ‘You do.’

  ‘There isn’t anyone,’ he said.

  Helen looked at him sidelong. ‘How old is she?’ she asked with a wry smile. ‘Or are you afraid of telling?’

  ‘Okay,’ he laughed. ‘She’s twenty-six. Amy.’

  ‘Hah! An age difference of what, fifteen years?’

  ‘You’re flattering. Seventeen.’

  ‘And you don’t miss her?’

  ‘We exchange emails every day.’

  ‘So it’s serious.’

  He shrugged. ‘We have a good time.’

  ‘Which to your mind is a serious thing.’

  Paul reflected. ‘One thing that’s always struck me about India is that despite all the vitality here it’s not a very sexy country, is it? The women are pretty, but they don’t shout sex at you, they’re so covered up and contained.’ He hesitated. ‘Maybe that’s why I love getting back.’

  ‘To your frenetic love life.’

  ‘I wouldn’t want to exaggerate.’

  ‘You said yourself you were a compulsive.’

  ‘I did?’

  Helen frowned. ‘Albert thought one of the problems in the West was that people didn’t so much have a life as a sex life. You know? Just blindly meeting and mating. He admired the way relationships are more under control here.’

  ‘Admired and mocked?’

  ‘That’s right. Mocking and admiring were the same thing for Albert.’

  ‘But how can you do that?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘He did it,’ Helen said. ‘The more Albert loved something, the less he felt part of it. Life itself even. Maybe it was like watching children. You love them and laugh at them. That’s how he felt about the headhunters in New Guinea. Alternatively, you could say he was like a child watching adults. You know how children find us ridiculous, superfluous.’

  ‘Certainly true of my kids,’ Paul agreed, ‘whenever I get to spend five minutes with them.’

  But Helen had turned away. ‘Albert always said he would have liked to be a child forever.’ The thought seemed to put her in a pensive mood.

  She didn’t want any sweet or coffee but asked directly for the bill. She has taken over the evening, Paul thought. He let it happen and realised that although she had changed approach completely he nevertheless sensed a strong continuity, even an intensification of who the woman truly was: a fighter, he decided.

  ‘I’ll pay this one,’ he offered.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. At the bottom of the stairs she smiled and took his arm. ‘Come with me.’

  The estate was lively with honking traffic and every variety of roadside cooking, men calling their wares, groups eating cross-legged on the ground out of dishes of tinfoil. Helen patted a cow tied to a water pump. ‘Hello Daisy darling! Isn’t it lunatic,’ she turned and laughed in Paul’s face, ‘that people touch their genitals to be purified! Could you think of anything less pure than a cow’s cunt?’

  Helen James was striding along almost coltishly now, pulling the American behind her. She claims not to like India, he thought, but obviously she is at home here. At home not liking it perhaps. Without warning, she started across the street. Paul found himself being steered through four and more lanes of moving honking swerving cars scooters autorickshaws buses trucks. Every encounter with every vehicle was a brazen challenge. It was mayhem. Helen laughed out loud as headlights flashed and veered.

  On the other side, squeezing between parked vehicles, he discovered that her goal was the counter of a liquor store open to the street. ‘A half pint of Royal Challenge and a bag of water,’ she told the man. The shopkeeper had a scarf round his neck despite the warm evening. ‘Come in,’ she beckoned to Paul.

  The liquor store was a tiny space of grubby shelves with a big fridge for beer. Helen walked behind the counter and through a door to the back. Paul followed her into a room whose walls were piled with beer crates. There were just a few plastic stools scattered between. A man in his early sixties was sitting alone, drinking whisky from a plastic glass. He nodded to them, but without smiling.

  ‘Sit down,’ Helen said, taking a stool.

  ‘We could have found a nice bar,’ Paul protested. ‘We could have gone to the Ashoka.’

  ‘This is more my style,’ she told him. ‘And cheaper.’

  The owner stood at the doorway grinning. He was plump, paunchy, pockmarked. ‘Hello madam, yes madam.’ He obviously knew her. The room was lit by a naked bulb. Helen divided the whisky into two glasses, tore the corner of the water bag with strong teeth and, holding it carefully in both hands, poured. Paul sat on a box watching. Her wrists and fingers were rapid and purposeful. ‘I had no idea there were these places,’ he said.

  ‘So’ – she handed him his glass – ‘what is it you imagine I’m hiding from you about my genius husband? The most intelligent man of the twentieth century. Some reviewer actually wrote that once.’

  Paul drank. The whisky was rough. ‘How can I know?’

  ‘I’m sure you think you know.’

  Helen said something now in Hindi to the man at the door and he laughed showing filthy teeth; the man drinking alone nodded gloomily.

  ‘Really I don’t know,’ Paul said. ‘An affair, I suppose. Or affairs. It’s hard to get through thirty years of marriage without an accident.’

  She was already laughing. ‘That’s what a post-puritan New Englander with his divorces and young wenches would think.’

  Paul decided to take her on. ‘Well, there was that business in Chicago with the—’

  ‘Albert was acquitted.’

  Paul sipped the whisky. ‘Despite the fact that a dozen or so other men whom the girl accused all confessed?’

  ‘Yes, despite that fact. I always knew he hadn’t done it.’

  ‘But how could you be sure? A guy selling insurance house to house brings a girl with him and offers her as a prostitute. That was the story, right? Later when the police catch up with them she blows the whistle on everyone who had her. How can you be sure that of all of them Albert alone was innocent?’

  ‘I’m su
re,’ Helen James said coolly. ‘I knew Albert to the core. And he was acquitted.’

  ‘For lack of evidence.’

  ‘What evidence could either side produce?’ Helen paused. ‘You think I’d be worried about your writing the book because of that, when it’s been in the public domain for years? That’s got nothing to do with it.’

  ‘Well …’

  A young man hurried into the back room, clutching his quarter bottle of whisky and bag of water. He sat on a stool only a couple of feet from Helen and unscrewed the cap. Before pouring the drink, he rested the mouth of the bottle against the wall and tipped it a little so that a few drops of whisky dribbled down the bare bricks. Paul raised an eyebrow.

  ‘For the gods,’ Helen laughed.

  The Indian smiled, as if this were a joke. He poured out half of the bottle into his glass and drank it off at once, then did the same with the rest. In less than five minutes he had finished and was gone.

  ‘Impressive,’ Paul said.

  ‘They treat it as a little ceremony,’ Helen told him. ‘Albert used to love watching how people drink.’

  ‘So what is the reason?’ Paul asked.

  She shrugged. With her long legs crossed on the small stool, he was very aware he was dealing with a woman who still knew how to play a woman’s cards.

  ‘Don’t you want people to know about Albert, to read his work?’

  She threw back her head and laughed. ‘Maybe it’s just that I don’t want you to write the book.’

  Suddenly, she leaned right forward from her stool, swayed a moment and almost fell in his direction. He smiled and caught an arm.

  ‘But why not?’

  She looked hard into his eyes. ‘Because I don’t like you, Paul.’ She was struggling to her feet. ‘I don’t like you one little bit. You remind me of my brother: another slobby man who has to get what he wants.’

  She swayed, pushed past him and stumbled out onto the street.

  PART THREE

  IN THE WEB

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  ‘I’M HERE,’ HE texted while still in the line for immigration. There was the usual jostling for position. John let them push. Already the heat was oppressive. The fluorescent lighting was oppressive. When the queue switched back in its snake of ropes, people sneaked to cut corners. They got a shoulder in front of you. This place is a battle, he thought. His mind was elsewhere. His mind was on the phone, but there was no reply.