Dreams of Rivers and Seas

by Tim Parks

  Towards midday she had come home in a taxi through the swirling grit. The wind was rising. ‘I’ll be on night duty later,’ she explained. ‘I’ll take the afternoon off.’

  Paul kissed her cheek at the doorway and smiled. The man was more chivalrous than she had imagined, more ordinary. They sat down to eat the food Lochana had prepared and he said: ‘Helen, I accept your proposal, if you really meant it. I’d like to get involved with your work for a while. I’ve decided to drop the book. I want action.’

  Helen was wiping her mouth and her hand folded tight around the paper napkin. ‘You’ve changed your plans?’ She wasn’t used to men who came round. ‘Just because you spent a night in the widow’s bed?’ She smiled sardonically. ‘It was hardly a mythical experience.’

  ‘Nothing to do with the night,’ Paul said. Frowning, he poured sauce on his rice, dug in his fork, ate. With his mouth full, he said: ‘I went to see Dr Bhagat this morning. Maybe that decided me.’

  ‘Ah.’ Helen raised an eyebrow. ‘Interesting?’

  Paul swallowed, wiped his mouth, looked at her. ‘He said he hadn’t thought Albert was really ill but all the same he wasn’t surprised by his death.’

  ‘Oh.’ Helen looked away at her food. ‘How … paradoxical.’

  ‘Quite. In fact, he asked me what was written on the death certificate. As cause.’

  ‘To be honest I wouldn’t know.’ She pushed her plate away, stood up and went to open a cupboard. Casually she added: ‘I had Kulwant write it.’

  ‘Ah. Kulwant.’

  ‘So you could ask him. If you’re interested.’

  Paul knew it was a provocation and let it pass. He hesitated: ‘Anyway, as I was leaving … well, I decided, enough is enough. You know? I need to do something different, as you suggested. I need action, real living, not abstruse ideas.’

  As she turned back to face him, a rush of emotion tensed Helen’s throat. This she hadn’t expected: a man who agreed with her. She came to sit down, picked up her fork again, tried to smile. ‘Actually, I had been thinking it was probably a mistake to have invited you. You’re too used to the easy life, in the end.’ She looked straight at him now. ‘Aren’t you, Paul?’

  That made him laugh. ‘Very probably!’ He dug in his fork again. ‘But now I need to get my hands dirty.’

  ‘Doctors do their best to keep their hands clean,’ she murmured.

  ‘I’m not expecting to do open heart surgery, Helen.’

  ‘And Albert?’ Suddenly, her voice took on a little-girl’s squeal of scandal. ‘You want to abandon Albert! After all the fuss you’ve made, bothering me all these months? His ideas were not abstruse.’

  Paul was perplexed. Again he had to wait till he had swallowed before speaking. ‘Listen, Helen, I’m not getting anywhere with the book. It’s time to put it aside. For the moment I need air.’

  Helen seemed almost contemptuous. ‘You won’t find much of that in Bihar in the monsoon season.’

  ‘Bihar?’

  ‘There’s a kala-azar epidemic. If you read the papers you’d have seen. They’re calling for trained aid workers. I was thinking of volunteering.’ She shook her head. ‘You don’t even know what kala-azar is, do you?’

  ‘I’m eager to hear.’

  ‘It’s ugly. A mosquito-transmitted infection. Fever, lethargy, swollen spleen, the lips and eyes bleed. It’s truly horrible to look at, smells atrocious, and kills.’

  ‘I’ll come,’ Paul said.

  She kept her face over her food. ‘Because you need air?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Helen was completely thrown. ‘And your little lady? I’m afraid her name always escapes me. I can’t be as exciting as her, can I?’ When Paul smiled wryly, she cried: ‘You’re far too narcissistic ever to stop writing!’

  ‘Hey, Helen!’ Paul complained. ‘Don’t try to dissuade me now I’ve made up my mind. I want to change. I’m excited about that. Let’s leave the woman question out of it.’

  She stood to boil water for coffee. Did the man suppose she would tell him everything about Albert as soon as he claimed to have given up the book, perhaps after he had worked beside her for a month or two to ‘prove’ it? Was it a ploy? But she knew Paul was not that kind. He is pushy, she thought, but he’s not a creep. Helen has known creeps.

  The teaspoon trembled as she transferred coffee powder from jar to cup. Has Albert’s death bound her or freed her? Can she really be bothered with this man? Or any man. Albert had never been pushy; but he was awfully seductive. Day after day Albert drew you in, until something quite grotesque seemed reasonable. ‘Let’s go and lie down, love,’ he had said that evening. He had been drawing her to the bed. He had been agitated for months. He had been anxious, excited, distracted, distant. She had never asked why. Then, suddenly, he was calm. He was hers again. He was decided. And he had known she wouldn’t insist on knowing why he wanted this. ‘I just want it to be you,’ he repeated. ‘I want to be yours. To finish. I’m finished, Helen, done. It’s what I want. Please.’ He had showered carefully so he needn’t be washed. He had dressed properly so she needn’t dress him. ‘This will bind us forever, and free us both,’ he whispered. She made no comment. ‘Let’s go to bed,’ he said. He had led her by the wrist.

  ‘Let’s go and lie down, Paul,’ Helen muttered when they had finished coffee. ‘There’s nothing else to do in a dust storm.’

  Paul had spent the previous night in her bed, in the James’s marriage bed. The two had made love rapidly and wordlessly. She seemed to take a purely physical and perfunctory pleasure in it all. For Paul it was unusual to feel that his libido was not centre stage driving the performance; it was as if he were being pulled, prompted, not exactly against his will, but in response to something beyond it. Helen made all the moves, showed him what she needed. He was almost obliged to be passive, a passive actor. Afterwards, it seemed nothing had really happened, everything was still to be decided between them.

  Now, as yesterday, Helen didn’t want the light. She drew heavy curtains over the drama of the churning dust in the street. Yet she wasn’t shy or ashamed. It was her face showed her age, not her body. Naked, she pushed herself blindly against the younger man, pressed her nose into his neck, her breasts against his chest. He tried to calm and caress her, to have the woman relax and respond; but today every contact, every sound and smell, was turning her back towards Albert. The tension built. Paul couldn’t understand it. The woman was frantic.

  ‘I can’t!’ Helen eventually cried. ‘I want to, but I can’t!’

  She turned away. After a long silence, she said quietly: ‘So now I suppose you can get up and go, Mr Journalist.’

  ‘My name’s Paul,’ he said. He kept a hand on the small of her back.

  ‘For a busy man like you, this must be so much wasted time.’

  ‘I’m moved,’ he said quietly. ‘And curious.’

  ‘About Albert.’

  ‘About Helen.’

  ‘Liar.’

  ‘Okay. About Albert and Helen. And about us.’

  She let him stroke her. Occasionally a limb twitched. She was tense beyond control.

  ‘How can you betray your pretty girlfriend just like that?’ Helen suddenly demanded.

  Paul didn’t reply. It was a non-question.

  ‘Not that I don’t know all there is to know about betrayal,’ she added.

  After another silence, he asked: ‘So when do we set off to Bihar?’

  ‘You’re too fat,’ she muttered.

  He laughed. She was lying with her back towards him and he pinched her softly at the waist. She didn’t respond.

  After a few minutes, Paul withdrew his hand, lay on his back. He found himself calm and not at all worried about the future. It was unusual. He was giving up a big source of income. He would follow Helen and watch how she went about her work in Bihar. He would learn and change. I’ve finally escaped my life, he thought. Lying quietly, he heard the wind banging a door. Someone was shouting i
n the street.

  She turned brusquely. ‘I betrayed Albert a dozen times,’ she said harshly. ‘More. Don’t imagine that’s the problem. As if I’d never made love to anyone else.’

  ‘Helen,’ he said.

  Their eyes met.

  ‘I didn’t hide it either. There’s nothing exclusive about sex. Our marriage went much deeper than that.’

  ‘You’re an unusual woman,’ Paul told her.

  She stopped. ‘So, now you can change your mind again and write your book.’

  ‘Betrayal is always a good selling point.’

  ‘Ahhhhhhhhh!’ Helen shrieked. She turned away from him and let her voice yell from the bottom of her belly: ‘Ahhhhhhhhh!’ Then again and again: a powerful, inarticulate howl. Then it became a moan, lower and sadder. Face to the wall, she pulled her knees to her chest and hugged them and moaned. Eventually, after a couple of minutes’ quiet, she told him, ‘Go away. Just go.’

  There was no question of Paul’s going.

  ‘Go!’

  He knew she didn’t want him to.

  In a coquettish voice, she eventually said: ‘You’ll get bored with me. I’m too old.’

  He said nothing.

  ‘I can’t add to your brood of abandoned children, you know.’

  ‘Surely a point in your favour.’

  ‘You’ll get bored!’ she shouted. ‘You’ll be fed up with miserable villages and dull ignorant peasants and fetid smells and filth and people dying dying dying all the time, helpless people with nothing to hope for buzzing round you like flies, always wanting something, always with their hands out, begging begging begging. Always always always.’

  She had exhausted herself.

  ‘If you haven’t got bored all these years,’ Paul asked quietly, ‘why should I?’

  ‘You’ll start studying spiders!’

  ‘Ha. I don’t think so.’

  ‘Or arranging theatricals for lush little girls.’

  ‘That’s a little more tempting.’

  ‘So you can smell their spicy young bodies and feed off their blind young energy.’

  She lay rigid, disoriented. Why had she said such an ugly thing? She clutched herself fiercely, dug her nails into her sides.

  Paul saw and yet felt perfectly calm. It was uncanny; usually a woman’s unhappiness would make him anxious and guilty. But not today.

  Then once again she whirled round and now a fist came down on his chest. ‘Damn you!’ she shouted. She punched him hard. ‘You’re making me say things I never even thought before. Damn you. Go! Get out!’

  He pulled himself into a sitting position and grabbed her wrists. She was screaming. ‘Albert is here beside me! Always! There’s no room for you! No room!’ Her face was thrust towards his, eyes and mouth straining. He was enthralled by the intensity of it, excited by his own calmness.

  And now the phone rang.

  They were both still. Helen’s body relaxed. He felt the tension go out of her. She was pleased the phone was ringing. She got up and hurried round the bed and out of the door. He watched her move, tall and pale in the shadow. Even naked she had a sort of mature reserve.

  ‘Hello?’ she answered. She was in the sitting room, out of sight. Paul reached for his trousers and, without thinking of asking permission, lit a cigarette. He felt pretty good. Who would have thought this when he came to India, when he took the taxi to the crematorium, planning his book? He was going to change his life.

  ‘No,’ he heard her saying. ‘I’m sorry. God. No, I don’t know. I wish I could help.’ Helen went on and on repeating these formulas. She had no idea. No, it wasn’t a good time to come round. No. She was on night duty tonight. Soon she’d be going back to the clinic.

  ‘Kulwant,’ she announced, returning. ‘Jasmeet has run away from home. His daughter. Apparently she took a lot of money.’

  ‘The dancing girl?’

  ‘Ex-dancing girl.’

  She looked at him. Paul saw she was herself again.

  ‘Sorry about the hysteria,’ Helen said.

  ‘No problem. I’m paying you back by smoking in your bed.’ Paul smiled. He tapped the ash out into the top of the cigarette packet. ‘Surely the girl is old enough to leave home if she wants to.’

  ‘He’s a protective father,’ Helen said. ‘They’re Sikhs.’

  She went to look out between the curtains. The dust storm was blowing hard. The silhouettes of the buildings opposite came and went. ‘He wanted me to give him the phone numbers of some other people Albert had got her doing things with. His theatre thing, whatever it was. He’s afraid she’s run off with one of the boys. But I don’t have any numbers.’

  ‘They’ll be on his phone,’ Paul said.

  ‘I don’t have it.’

  ‘No laptop and no phone? He must have left them somewhere.’

  ‘I couldn’t care less. Let her run off with the boy. She’s a flirty, empty-headed little thing and they want to marry her to some dull, devout fellow in pharmaceutical sales. Obviously she runs away.’

  Helen came back to the bed and sat down with her back against the bedstead, her arms folded. After a moment or two she told him in an even voice: ‘You made a mistake, by the way, how you were going about the book.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘You’d have been fine if you’d started where I told you. With his brother’s death.’

  Paul lifted his eyes.

  ‘I’ll tell you a story,’ she said.

  ‘Go ahead.’

  She looked at him. What was she trying to achieve? She frowned: ‘Just before we went to Kenya, right at the beginning, Albert took me to see his parents. It was the only time I met them. We’d married without telling people, in a registry office. Albert said the only way to do something his father might object to was to present the man with a fait accompli. He was rather scared of him, I think. Anyway, they lived in a big house on Headington Hill, wealthy outskirts of Oxford, and as it turned out his father was charming, rather gallant, not at all worried about us marrying or moving to Africa, not at all interested actually. He talked about his research the whole time. He was an expert in dominants and recessives and terribly concerned that I understand exactly what was at stake. We talked for hours. But his wife, Albert’s mother, fussed, interrupting all the time. She was a tiny woman, really very pretty for her age. Albert kept ruffling her hair – he was much taller than she was – he kept saying, “Don’t worry Flower, Helen will look after me. Kenya’s okay.” She was older than his father, I think, by quite a few years. He called her Flower and she called him Bumble. I found it sickening. Albert and I never called each other anything but Albert and Helen.’

  Paul closed his eyes. He enjoyed listening to her very English accent. It had a hard, exciting edge.

  ‘Anyway, in the afternoon, when his parents were both out, Albert showed me his brother’s and sister’s old rooms. He had to search for the keys, because they were kept locked. He’d obviously waited for the parents to be away on purpose. Well, Amelia’s room was bright with fresh flowers on the dresser beside a portrait photo. She wasn’t very pretty, nothing like the mother. More like a female version of Albert. There were her books, an old stereo system, a hockey stick. That sort of thing. She was a lot older than Albert and he hadn’t been close to her. She died when he was only about, what …?’

  ‘Fourteen,’ Paul said.

  ‘Right.’ Helen paused. ‘But John’s room was a shock. When we opened it dust sifted off the top of the door and swirled up from the floor. The curtains were pulled to, it was dark and stale and there were clothes spilling out of drawers, books open on the floor, cobwebs everywhere. It must have been shut ever since he died, seven or eight years before. Even the bed was unmade and thick with dust; I touched it and there was spidery fluff on my fingers. Then Albert showed me a photo on the bedside table; it was the only thing in the room that had been wiped. It was Bridget, the girl John had gone mad about. A real looker. Albert said: “There, I’ve shown you,” and c
losed the door again.’

  ‘Strange.’

  There, I’ve shown you. No sooner had Helen spoken the words than she heard Albert’s quiet voice saying them again. Despite the heat, she shivered.

  ‘Still,’ Paul said, ‘all this hardly matters now I’ve decided not to write the book. Does it?’

  Helen looked at his thick chest on the sheets. Who was this man to her, if not Albert’s biographer?

  ‘About what just happened,’ she began.

  ‘Forget it.’

  ‘No, I’m not apologising.’ She hesitated. ‘I just want to explain. Because there’s something that … that has been driving me mad, to be honest, and that makes all this … with you … so difficult.’

  ‘Spit it out,’ he smiled.

  With unexpected promptness, Helen said: ‘Albert and I didn’t make love for the last … maybe, five years.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘That side of our life stopped. Or rather, he stopped. We never made love in this bed, for example. Never.’

  She sat with her arms folded, rocking slightly against the pillow.

  Eventually Paul asked: ‘But isn’t that normal, maybe, in a long marriage? I can imagine there’s a moment when you just lose interest. I mean, in sex.’

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘I stopped making love to my second wife right after the honeymoon. I can never understand how we managed to have a child.’

  Helen shook her head. ‘It was important for us.’

  ‘His illness?’ Paul suggested. ‘I don’t suppose prostate cancer encourages sex.’