by Tim Parks
‘Beauty’s got nothing to do with it,’ John muttered.
‘You should say something, John,’ Elaine repeated. ‘She was your mother.’
‘No.’
Kulwant Singh strode to the podium with the rapidity of a warrior. ‘Ladies and gentlemen.’ He turned this way and that, his fists pressed together and against his chest. ‘Friends. I am very upset by what has happened. And I’m very angry. I cannot tell you all how upset I am. Helen was a very beautiful woman. Yes, she was very funny also. Full of living. Sometimes we drank whisky together after our work. I have known her a long time. Five years. Sometimes we had breakfast after a night duty. Helen liked to laugh and she liked to hear good jokes. She was not a snob. She was not squeamish. For many many years this woman worked very hard to help people, she helped the poorest people, and she asked nothing. I think she was paid nothing also. She did not even ask for admiration. It is unusual. She did not ask for medals. How many people will give so much and ask for so little? For nothing even. Her death is really very sad and very stupid. And I am very angry that I, you, all the people who knew Helen, did not see this coming. We should have prevented it. Helen was a private woman, yes. She was very discreet. She didn’t often say what was in her head, she seemed a very strong woman, she didn’t ask for help or sympathy, but we should have understood. It is a condemnation to all of us. Helen still had much to live for. She had a fine son, John James. He is here today. He is a fine young man. Very intelligent. We can imagine his grief. She had warm friends. There are many of her friends here today. I wish only that Helen had leaned on us the way other people were leaning on her, always. God could not have wanted this,’ the Sikh said with sudden conclusive vehemence. ‘God does not like these ugly deaths.’
For a moment Kulwant seemed unable to go on. He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again. ‘I shall miss Helen very much. Very much.’ The big man suddenly swung round, knelt down, pushed his face against the coffin and kissed it.
John bowed his head in his hands. He was stung and paralysed and tongue-tied. He did not look up when the Sikh stepped down and again the small congregation applauded warmly. He did not look up as the elderly Dr Yellaiah began to explain how, when the cost of medicines had gone beyond the clinic’s budget, Helen James would pay for a patient’s treatment herself. ‘She used her own money, or her husband’s. Even in the case of the poor boy who died with her,’ the old doctor went on in a thin, high-pitched voice, ‘Helen James had paid for special antibiotics to be procured in the hope that these would overcome the resistance that the boy’s strain of the disease had developed.’
John did not look up. Caught in the tangle of it all, the déjà vu, he sat still and numb as the man from the British Council said a few quiet words, then while Aradhna Verma spoke for fifteen interminable minutes about Helen’s commitment to the rural poor and various ambitious projects presently being sponsored by the Gandhi Society to which those present might wish to give generously. Even for the awful moment of the coffin’s departure, John would not look up. He sat rigid.
‘It’s time to go,’ Elaine tugged at his wrist.
He wouldn’t move.
‘There’s a girl wants to talk to you.’
John was stiff as stone. Elaine smiled at the Indian girl and shrugged her shoulders and Jasmeet turned and hurried after her father.
‘John, there’s another group to come in. We’ve really got to go.’
John would stay for that funeral too then. He would stay for all the funerals.
Everybody had got to their feet now. Most had reached the door and were walking out into the stifling day. Then Paul Roberts came back in, hurried up the aisle and along the bench to where Elaine was still beside her boyfriend. ‘We should be going now,’ he said. Elaine made a face of desperation. John just sat. His neck was bowed, his cheeks buried in his hands.
‘If John agrees,’ Paul said carefully, ‘when the ashes are ready I’ll see they’re sprinkled in the river where she put Albert’s, I think.’
‘No,’ John sat up and turned to him. ‘No. John doesn’t agree. The ashes stay in the crematorium.’
The remaining hours before the flight were ones of extreme anxiety for Elaine. Events had deprived her of every sure reference. On leaving for India she had told her parents not to phone, not to meddle in her life any more, and they hadn’t. She imagined they must be furious and while, on the flight out, this thought had afforded some pleasure, now it made her apprehensive. Hanyaki on the other hand had texted her almost hourly for days. He needed her for the opening night. But the day of the funeral his messages stopped. He had found someone else perhaps. And now John wouldn’t speak to her at all. She had come out here for him, but he was no longer the boy she had known in Maida Vale; he was no longer the young PhD, the safe bet, the steady friend. ‘What happened, John?’ she asked him. She felt vulnerable. ‘What was it?’ He set his lips and clenched his jaw.
Elaine was lost. John moved from room to room in a desultory, angry way, muttering to himself. He grabbed a broom and swept. The books and videos were packed and gone. Paul had arranged for a freight company to come. The men had filled three packing cases and left behind a mess of dust and cobwebbed corners. John swept up dead flies and assorted debris. He even swung the broom along the curtain pelmet. ‘What for?’ Elaine protested. Whoever came next would do a thorough clean anyway. He looked up at her, but would not speak. He shifted the fridge and swept out the filth behind. ‘John,’ she asked, ‘please. Why am I here if not to be with you? Why don’t we talk?’
Returning from the crematorium, Paul had sat with the young couple in a taxi. He found the young man’s behaviour embarrassing. He had paid for their flights to Heathrow and was yet to be thanked. He had paid for the funeral too. It was not cheap. He would have liked to talk intelligently to John about his father, his mother, about what had happened, about how the two of them would be remembered by posterity, about the papers being shipped to London – where would they be stored? – about an eventual book – who could tell what the future might bring, after his return from Bihar? But the boy was hostile, even rude. I’ve done nothing to deserve this, Paul was sure. He rather pitied the charming Elaine.
The afternoon dragged on. John paced. He banged the broom against the skirting. I should go out, Elaine decided, but she felt intimidated by the prospect of adventuring into the town alone. Perhaps she could call Paul now, she thought. He would take her into the old centre again for this last evening. At least she would see something. She hadn’t seen India at all. He was an interesting man, full of stories. John’s refusal to acknowledge her and his angry back-and-forth through the two or three rooms was a constant friction on her nerves.
Towards seven, with darkness already fallen, the phone rang. Heinrich and Sharmistha were inviting them to dinner. ‘No thanks,’ John said and put the phone down. When it started ringing again, he bent down and unplugged its wire.
‘For Christ’s sake!’ Elaine demanded. ‘I exist too, you know!’
John carried the phone into the kitchen and put it away in a cupboard.
‘We need to eat at least,’ she called after him.
John didn’t need.
Elaine watched him. What had happened to John was truly awful, but all the same he was behaving badly. She turned on the television and tried to follow a programme. They were talking about removing food vendors from Delhi’s streets. At least we are flying back tomorrow, she thought. Then I’ll leave him.
John had sat beside her now. It was evening already and with the daylight gone the TV colours played across his face. She turned and saw how tense he was. And as she watched his lips moving, the muscles working round his jaw and a nerve that twitched by his eyebrow, she knew she hadn’t quite given up on him yet. His mum killed herself, she thought. Together with a teenage boy. How disturbing must that be?
‘John?’ she tried.
He didn’t reply.
They were showing a soap opera in a
mixture of Hindi and English. John stared without laughing. She said softly: ‘Actually, I came out here to accept that offer of marriage you made. Remember? When you texted me?’
John breathed deeply.
‘Why else do you think I’d have got a plane to come to India? That’s why I gave up the play. To accept your offer.’
John’s face remained blank. He doesn’t care, she decided. He’s forgotten even. It was months ago and she had given him a determined no. What a lesson in life this was!
Now John stood up and wandered off again, this time into the kitchen. Elaine felt scared and angry and stupid. But she had decided to hold onto him. It’s a spell and he’ll snap out of it. Or she herself was caught in a spell.
John was suddenly back in the room. ‘Let’s walk,’ he announced abruptly. He was already heading for the door. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
She pulled on her sandals and ran down the stairs after him. Away from the apartment block, the road wasn’t lit. The cement pavements were rough and broken. Elaine tripped. ‘Where do you want to go?’
‘Nowhere.’
The air smelled of burned cloth and oil. It was still hot. The cars passed in gritty, frenzied surges released by some distant traffic light. After a few minutes they passed an animal dead in the gutter. John crouched down and poked it. A dog.
‘Don’t touch it, John.’
‘It’s only dead.’
‘Look at the ants.’ Thick lines of insects marched across the pavement, tails in the air. ‘God knows what infections there must be.’
He stood up and began walking again.
‘Do you know where we’re going?’
He didn’t reply.
‘What if we get lost?’
He shrugged his shoulders.
They passed a huge billboard with a shabby kiosk beneath. Cars had pulled over onto the mud and men were leaning on a fence drinking from bottles. A couple of autoricks slowed to offer rides but John ignored them. Then, in a lull, a peacock shrieked. It shrieked again. ‘Oh Jesus!’ Elaine muttered. The cry came from behind a low wall. John didn’t turn. He wouldn’t speak.
But very slowly, and despite the heat and sweat, Elaine began to feel better walking. She began to feel they were together at least, the two of them. Even without talking or touching, still they were moving together, walking together in the same direction along the same road. She decided just to trust and walk, trust and walk. Taking her somewhere, he was taking responsibility for bringing her back.
Meanwhile, the length of the streets was surprising. Elaine hadn’t thought of India like this. The streets went on forever in discouragingly straight lines past shabby apartment blocks, scrapyards, empty plots with leaning trees and washing on wires. The occasional junctions were open and dark and there seemed to be nothing to distinguish one from another. Dark trucks rumbled in small convoys. There were no signposts. A bus threw out clouds of smoke. Two boys hung from the side, shouting. They passed a dozen or so older women squatting together on the dry mud beside the pavement, eating. They had a goat tethered to an old block of cement. One of the women lifted her head and called, but John walked on.
‘If we got a taxi we could go to town and have a drink or something,’ she said. ‘I’m famished.’
Now at last he stopped; he looked at her. Finally he said, ‘Please, Elaine.’
From then on the silence was easier.
They tramped through the empty roads of southern Delhi. They turned neither right nor left, just walked, Elaine had no idea in which direction, away from everything it seemed. A pale moon was out, but the ugly landscape seemed to have a sick glow that was all its own. She began to count the telegraph poles, the leaning bus stops by tiny side roads. The thought that they would have to walk the same way back began to oppress her. He is walking himself to exhaustion, she thought. He is walking away from talking, away from life.
The road had been climbing slightly for a few minutes and now they realised they were on a bridge. The asphalt had lifted away from the land below. To their right a single iron rail passed through cement posts.
‘Water,’ John said.
Elaine looked down. Sunk into steep banks she could just make out a glassiness in the dark. There was a dank smell.
‘Is it the river?’
‘I don’t think so.’
They stood looking down. Precarious on the steep banks, a half-dozen shadowy animals were grazing in clumps of grass. It was hard to make them out. Buffalo perhaps. About fifty yards beyond, a light flickered inside a tent or shack.
‘The Yamuna is wider,’ John said, ‘with big sand-flats either side. I don’t think it passes here.’
He searched along the edge of the road, found a small stone and dropped it beyond the rail. There was a dull plop, but they couldn’t see anything. The moonlight didn’t seem to reflect on this water. It was quite a way below. John dropped another stone and another. She was grateful he had stopped walking. Then she grew anxious again when he just stood still leaning over the rail.
Without thinking, she asked: ‘Why didn’t you want your mum’s ashes put in the river?’
John didn’t reply, but turned to her. She saw his face cloud and then, in a rapid movement, he felt in the back pocket of his jeans. He pulled out a couple of pieces of paper and, without unfolding them, tore them up with quick nervous fingers, first in half, then again. Reaching over the rail, he let the pieces flutter down through the still air.
‘It must be a canal, or drain,’ John said now. He leaned over, wondering if he could see the paper on the water. Yes. Its whiteness picked up occasional flares of passing traffic in scattered scraps.
‘Litterbug,’ she said stupidly.
John hung over the rail. ‘Is it moving?’
She watched. ‘No.’
The scraps of paper hung quite still in the dark below them. The water had a rank, low-tide smell.
‘Remember …’ he began, but then had to wait while a slow truck rumbled by. A blast of warm air passed over them. ‘Do you remember that night when we went swimming in the river?’
‘The water was disgustingly slimy,’ she laughed.
‘Better than here, though.’
She looked down at the flecks of paper. ‘They have moved. Look. A tiny bit. Away from us. It’s moving that way.’
‘Would you swim in here?’ he asked.
‘No way.’
‘For me?’
Elaine was puzzled. His voice had altered.
‘What good would it do?’
He was silent.
‘And you? You’d swim in this sewer for me?’
John reached out his hand and touched her. ‘Let’s go back. It’s a long walk. Tomorrow’s an early start.’
In the Jameses’ flat, John stripped to his underwear and lay on the sofa, ready for sleep. He didn’t want to sleep with her. Elaine went to the bathroom, showered, washed her hair carefully and wrapped it in a towel. She cleaned her teeth. Lifting a glass of water to her mouth, finding her face in the mirror unusually pensive and concentrated, she had an image of herself setting out to carry the glass all the way back to Maida Vale without a spill. Why not? That would be a nice mime, she thought vaguely, crossing the world with a full glass of water in your hand. It could be a comedy, or rather frightening. She filled the glass again and held it at arm’s length. Her hand was rock steady. The liquid didn’t even tremble. The whole glass was perfectly transparent. Then she thought that if they departed tomorrow, there was no reason why she shouldn’t appear in the play after all. They couldn’t possibly have found anyone to take her place and learn everything in a matter of hours. Still carrying the water, she walked back into the sitting room and across to the small bedroom where she had slept the night before.
‘Goodnight, John,’ she said quietly.
John had his eyes shut.
‘Ellie,’ he said.
She stopped.
Without opening his eyes, he said quietly: ‘You know Dad had a
girlfriend before he died. I read some letters. She was very young.’
‘Oh?’ Elaine turned to him. He seemed very still. She hesitated. ‘Did that upset you?’
‘Well,’ he lay still on the sofa, he seemed to be concentrating on staying very still, ‘I just can’t imagine what he thought he was doing with someone nearly forty years younger. Or why on earth the girl would want him.’
Something in his voice made her tremble and she felt a drop of water spill over her fingers. Eventually she asked: ‘Did your mum know?’
His face was perfectly smooth. ‘I’ve no idea.’
‘Maybe it wasn’t important. Just a sort of accident.’
‘Then her dying with this really young guy beside her.’ John spoke calmly and softly. ‘It’s so weird, isn’t it?’
Elaine said nothing now. She was aware of concentrating on keeping her arm steady and simultaneously thought that actually it was pointless, since she had already spilled a bit, before even crossing the room, never mind the hemisphere.
John opened his eyes. He looked at her standing between sofa and guest room, then suddenly smiled. ‘God, what tiny feet you have!’
She tried to laugh. ‘So you always said.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but for months now it’s been like I’m constantly trying to wake up from something.’ He thought for a moment. ‘But before I wake up I have to remember the dream I’ve been having, and I can’t. When that Sikh bloke gave his speech, I don’t know why, but I was sure it was going to happen. Something horrible. Then it passed.’
She waited, holding the glass more calmly now. After a moment, she said: ‘I thought it was really nice what the Sikh man said. What was his name? I mean it showed how much people loved her.’
