by Tim Parks
There was a brief silence. In a sharply frank voice, Paul said: ‘Helen, why don’t you help me a bit? Then I’ll leave you alone.’
She sipped her drink. ‘You did say a few days ago that you were in a hurry to get back to Massachusetts; the bliss of little Miss.’
‘And I am.’
‘It doesn’t feel like that, Paul. It feels like you’re changing.’ She hesitated. ‘You remember I said that you were like my brother.’
Paul nodded.
‘My brother was, probably is, single-minded to the point of cruelty. He rode roughshod over everyone. He treated my mother like a doormat and she loved him for it. I hated him. He encouraged my opposition because he saw it would push me out of the family and give him complete control of my parents’ money. Which he soon got. In his early twenties, he destroyed a close friend of mine. He used her in all kinds of ways, left her pregnant, almost crazy.’
Helen smiled wryly. ‘Well, forgive me, but I had got the impression that you were a little like that and that Albert was just a smart project for you, a sort of New Age stepping stone to celebrity. But now I see I was wrong. I see Albert is undermining your confidence in every way. Which is what he did to everybody. You are getting confused. If I were you, I’d drop the book now and go straight home.’
Paul collected himself. ‘Helen, let’s leave my motives out of it, okay, and concentrate on the business in hand. Reading those letters, I had the impression that some sort of conflict in Albert’s mind was reaching a climax: on the one hand he wanted to retreat into a backwater, on the other he felt he was under some awesome imperative, I don’t know, to save the planet or something.’ Paul stopped. ‘I thought he might have been frightened by himself somehow. I can’t explain.’
‘I told you,’ she said, ‘Albert wasn’t unhappy to be ill. In a way it thrilled him. I also told you that the place to start your book was his family.’
‘But you were his family.’
Helen didn’t reply.
‘And did he go and talk at that man’s ashram, the one who wrote the long, handwritten letter?’
‘Which man?’
‘Dr Radha Ladi-something?’
‘That’s a woman’s name!’ Helen laughed. ‘Albert loved ashrams. Probably he did go. He was away for a few days in December as I recall. You could go yourself and find out.’
‘After I’ve seen the Ayurvedic doctor?’
‘Remind me to give you his address. A charlatan no doubt.’
They were both aware of a powerful tension now, of playing the decisive moves in some undeclared game. But while Paul sensed that Helen could read him like a book – and he had nothing to hide – she remained completely enigmatic. The pale lips and grey-green eyes concentrated more wilfulness than any woman’s he had known.
As always Helen looked away. Knowing he was puzzling over her, she let her eyes wander over the familiar café. There were adolescents in European clothes, eating snacks and drinking Coke. Three well-to-do women in lush saris had their heads together over ice cream. It was an expensive place. Then, abruptly, the door was flung open and a small child ran in. Naked, thin as a rake, hair tousled, feet filthy, the boy dashed between the tables laughing and snapping his fingers at the customers. He came to a stop in front of Paul and shouted, ‘Yah! Yah! Yah!’ He seemed possessed, teeth flashing. ‘Woo, woo, woo!’ The boy’s head wagged madly from side to side inches from the eyes of the American. His infant ribcage heaved. The owner of the café appeared and yelled; the boy turned and, shrieking with laughter, ran out into the heat.
‘What the hell was that about?’ Paul asked. He was shaken.
‘I suppose he just wanted to see this side of the window for a moment.’ Helen chuckled: ‘You should have seen your face!’
The moment seemed to have cheered her up. ‘Listen, Paul,’ she said. ‘Darling,’ she added ironically. She looked him straight in the eye for once. ‘Why don’t you leave Albert be and stay in India to work with me? What about it? We could go out to the villages where these kids are. Like this boy. There is so much to do. I know of any number of projects. There’s a tam-tam with these things. I’m tired of Delhi. You could write about aid work, if you have to write. There’s a market. And it would do some real good.’
She laughed at the surprise on his face. ‘Then if you really care so much, about the Boston babe, I mean, if she’s not just a roué’s amusement, get her to come over here too and work along with us. The more the merrier. What does it matter to you what Albert was doing in the end? He had a good life, he enjoyed his torments and contradictions. I can see writing about his ideas, but not a biography. Leave be.’
She took a breath. She was speaking persuasively. ‘Come on Paul.’ She reached a hand across the table and placed it on his. ‘Come out to the villages with me, see the real world. Some place where we know what needs doing and we do it. That’s living. It would be a revelation for you.’
Paul felt it harder and harder to be sure of himself; he had left Boston, now she was asking him to leave his work, himself really. Lighting a cigarette, he raised a hand for more drinks while she went on talking.
‘You’ll see things you never imagined. And you’ll know you’re doing something positive. I’m sure deep down you want that. Don’t you? You’re from a religious family. Then when you see someone recover from TB, when you see someone able to live and love because of something you did, you’ll feel fantastic. Later, like I said, you can even make money writing about it. Why not? People will be far more interested in that than they ever would be about an old eccentric like Albert.’
Paul blew out smoke. Resistance was on automatic now. He sighed. ‘Helen,’ he said finally, ‘Helen, a man doesn’t just suddenly die in his bed of prostate cancer. Does he? It doesn’t happen that way.’
She withdrew her hand and sat back.
‘I mean, I’ve been thinking about this, there would have been a long period when a sufferer like that was bedridden, when he needed help and nursing.’
‘Let me enjoy my drink,’ she said dryly. ‘I had a tough day.’
Paul watched her. He felt pleased with himself for turning a difficult conversation round, yet cruel too. Then he wondered if he wasn’t moved more by a desire to break this woman down than a wish for information. He had got drawn into something, something unusual. They were silent for a while so that he became aware of the chattering all around him. There were a couple of pretty girls enjoying a tête-à-tête. Discussing men, Paul thought at once.
‘I had two patients die today,’ she told him.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘One was a girl with a haemorrhage; she was on the floor of the waiting room when I arrived. She must have given birth during the night. She bled to death. There was nothing we could do but clean up.’
Paul waited a moment. ‘Is that kind of thing common?’
‘It’s not unheard of.’
‘You think she hid the pregnancy and killed the baby?’
‘I don’t think anything,’ Helen said acidly.
‘And the other?’
‘The other was an old man with cancer of the bowel. He wanted to die at home but his relatives brought him in because it was too much for them. Which in India is saying something.’
She looked at him.
‘Paul, that was the kind of scene Albert very much wanted to avoid: the terminal situation. He didn’t want to get anywhere near it. The pains he was dealing with were already enough for him: the endless trips to the bathroom, the constant sense of blockage. Do you understand? Or do I need to tell you exactly what dosage we give patients when the moment comes?’
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
HELEN AND PAUL walked slowly through the warm evening towards India Gate. At a certain point arms were linked. A strange mixture of solemnity and light-heartedness had descended. They smiled when accosted by the autorickshaw drivers. ‘Sir, madam, hello! Climb in!’ They laughed at the antics of some boys kicking a can. But they did not break
the silence between them. When they reached the open space around the floodlit gate, they ignored the inevitable snake charmer, a girl with a monkey and a drum, and sat in the shadows on the dry grass amid couples and families and children running with balls.
Eventually, Helen lay on her back and closed her eyes. ‘Why didn’t I just tell you to leave me alone?’ she sighed. ‘That would have been much more sensible.’
Paul said nothing. Despite the clamour of traffic and peddlers, the evening had taken on a peculiarly still feel, but drawing them somewhere, like a quiet river. He let it drift.
‘Now you know enough to put me in gaol.’
He looked at the woman, lying with arms outspread, eyelids trembling in a tired face. He liked her tiredness. The cheekbones were smooth and high. The knees, just beneath the hem of her dress, were nicely turned. The inside of the wrist was ivory white.
‘Whatever would I want to do that for?’ He waved away a fly that was trying to settle on her hair.
After a short silence, she said, ‘So tell me about your girlfriend.’ She wriggled to make herself comfortable. ‘You don’t talk about her much. For a man in love.’
A vendor was pushing a refrigerated trolley, calling out the price of ices. Another man had a basket with flower garlands that he tried to drape over every young girl who passed. The evening simmered with abrupt cries and bright lights in a broth of warm, liquid colour.
When Paul still didn’t reply, Helen said dryly, ‘You know I’m beginning to wonder whether the inquisitive biographer isn’t trying to start something with the widow so as to find out all he can about his subject.’
Paul laughed. Her arm on the grass seemed to be beckoning. Without thinking, he reached over until the tip of his forefinger touched her pulse. She started, then frowned behind closed eyes.
‘The biographer has considered that possibility, I presume?’
‘It did half cross his mind at some point, yes.’
‘You try it with every woman, don’t you, Paul?’
‘What? To get information about their dead husbands?’
She smiled. ‘Sex.’
‘Oh that!’
Sitting with his knees gathered to his chin, Paul let his fingertip trace the vein from open hand to elbow.
‘Kulwant’s like you,’ Helen said. ‘And Sikhs are supposed to be so dignified and chaste!’ Her voice had a hint of indignation.
‘Everybody’s supposed to be chaste.’
‘That’s right,’ she agreed.
Once more they were quiet. Paul watched the flow of traffic, the girl with the monkey on a lead walking away. Helen lay still, eyes closed, feeling the ground against shoulders and head, listening to disembodied sounds.
‘So why hasn’t Mr Biographer tried with me?’
‘Mrs James,’ he said in mock exclamation. ‘Please!’
‘I mean, all this time here in India without a woman. It must be quite a trial.’
‘How do you know I haven’t had a woman?’
‘You’re right. How do I know?’
‘I haven’t.’
‘I still don’t know,’ she told him evenly.
‘No,’ he agreed. ‘Still, as far as the lady in question is concerned, the widow I mean, and aside from the biographer’s respect for her bereavement, she did make it abundantly clear at one point that she didn’t like him and even told him on two or three occasions that she felt her life was over, something that would appear to preclude adventures.’
‘You’re flattering,’ Helen said. ‘It’s my age. No, please don’t stop.’ He had taken his finger from her wrist.
Paul thought about the situation. ‘You look fine to me,’ he eventually said in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘Guess I’m not in the habit of mixing work and pleasure.’
‘Liar! I bet you’ve mixed everything with everything a dozen times.’
‘Maybe not a dozen.’
She didn’t answer, enjoying the darkness of closed eyes, the slightly acid smell of the dry earth, the light touch of the finger on her arm. At last she said: ‘Actually you should write a book about Albert.’
‘Oh, I should now?’
‘Not a biography. A sort of profile. Ideas and character. The main achievements. You could get over what a delicate, spiritual man he was. Unlike yourself.’ And she added tonelessly: ‘Then you’ll understand what I meant when I said my life was over.’
Paul patted his jacket pockets, found his cigarettes, tipped the lighter out of the box. The smoke tasted good in the warm evening with so much busy life going on around.
‘So,’ he said briskly, ‘once again, my Boston lady’s name is Amy, right? Amy Henderson, and she is about five-seven. She’s slim, blondish, moody, sings in a band that plays sort of jazzy rock, one CD that got nice notices and no sales, works part time in the governor’s office. Passionately liberal. Smokes heavily. Lives with two other girls the same age. Young women on the move. Says she doesn’t want children but no doubt will if and when she moves in with a man. Maybe me, maybe not.’
As he spoke, Paul watched Helen’s face.
‘Go on.’
‘That’s about it, I think.’
‘You haven’t said why you like her.’
One hand on her arm, one slipping his lighter away, Paul spoke with the cigarette between clenched lips: ‘Easy to be with. Sparkling eyes. We have fun. It’s effortless.’
Helen frowned. ‘But it could be like that with any number of 26-year-olds!’
‘Hey, where’s the dotted line?’ he laughed. ‘Let me sign up!’
‘And you would marry someone on that basis? Fun, lack of effort?’
‘I’m not marrying next week. Actually, I haven’t seen her for some months now. Perhaps when I get back she’ll have found someone else.’
‘But why marry anyway? You said she doesn’t want children. You can have your fun without marrying.’
‘True.’ Paul reflected. ‘I guess marriage is something I haven’t got right yet. I have children whom I hardly see because my ex-wives have new husbands who want to play dad. They want to forget I exist.’ He stopped for a few moments, then added: ‘One thing that attracted me to Albert, to writing a biography, was your long marriage. I wanted to write about that.’
‘Why? Why does that impress you? Your parents must have been together just as long, if not longer.’
He pulled hard on his cigarette. ‘My parents are ankle-deep in conventional glue. No, up to their eyes in it. They are middle-class America. The pressure around them holds them together: the mortgage, the golf club, the Church; above all the Church. With you and Albert it’s the mixture of the marriage and your complete independence. It’s you two against the world, all over the world, out there in the flux, a story completely detached from any real background, no support. That’s what everyone dreams of in a marriage, I think. Actually, that aspect is as important to me for the book as Albert’s ideas. Especially now …’ – Paul hesitated, eyes following his finger as it ran along the blue vein of her forearm – ‘especially now that you’ve told me about the way he died.’ He paused again: ‘That must have been an act of love.’
Helen closed lids beneath lids. How had he known to say those words? She let herself sink into a deeper dark, the dark of their bedroom when it was decided and done, the warmth of that last embrace. Beneath her hips and shoulders the hard ground of the park melted away. Only this American’s finger touching her arm kept a part of her present and afloat. Sinking, she would have liked to explain all kinds of things. In truth, she had told him very little. But then he would write those things down. She would have liked to tell him how beautiful it had been. But then she would have had to explain the wretchedness that came before.
In a distant voice, she muttered, ‘A long marriage can become a burden.’
‘Ditto a brief one,’ he quipped at once.
‘When you move around all the time, living in the places we lived in, you rely exclusively on each other for everything. Everything�
��s invested there, in that one person. It’s unbearable sometimes. Especially when that person changes, when you change.’
Paul said nothing. He had sensed how their conversations swung and circled. Perhaps he should just stop talking.
‘Things weren’t always easy,’ she said.
Submerged in the dark behind her eyelids, she waited for his question. The biographer would want details. When Paul said nothing, she went on: ‘Sometimes, in a marriage of thirty years, you find yourself asking: can it really go on, as long as life? It becomes a sort of eternity. And a question mark.’
Still he didn’t respond. His finger continued its slow back and forth on the skin inside the elbow. He is keeping me here, she thought, when I could be sinking into Albert’s embrace, rubbing my cheek against Albert’s stubble. Vaguely, Helen heard the sounds of traffic and people laughing: the vendors, the faint fluting of the snake charmer. The creature would be uncoiling from the bottom of his basket, mindlessly rising to the seductive dirge as she was sinking into her dying husband’s arms. She had such a powerful sense of his presence. I’ll open my eyes and he’ll be here, she thought.
But the finger insisted, wandering gently up and down her arm. She wouldn’t be allowed to sink. The sounds grew louder again.
Helen shook her head a little and said more firmly: ‘Then, you know, Albert always saw everything in terms of patterns, and trajectories.’
She hesitated. ‘He loved the word trajectory.’
Paul wouldn’t speak. Without a question to fence against, Helen was uncertain; it was as if she were feeling her way through dark rooms. ‘How something ended, how anything ends,’ she murmured, ‘showed you what the trajectory had been, who a person was. Albert always said that. It’s the shape survives when the thing is gone. That’s what form was for him, the shape of something gone.’
Still Paul didn’t respond. He was very aware now of having found a new card to play. Silence. He felt strong and at the same time more powerfully drawn than ever.
