by Katy Gardner
4
LATER, after we’d stopped thanking her and returned to our seats, the woman told us how she’d seen the belt drop from Gemma’s pack.
“I reckon someone must have had a go at it, you know?” she said, squeezing onto the bench next to Gemma. “It was like, just hanging there, like someone had pulled it out? Then I kept trying to catch up with you, but you were running too fast for the train?”
Close up, she was not the miraculous apparition she had seemed initially, the sea of staring faces parting as she passed. Instead, she was just like any other backpacker. It was true that she was notably thin: her clavicle bones too sharp, and her head too large for her slim neck, but after a few months of street dahl and the endless Delhi-belly that such food entailed, weight loss was as much a badge of authentic low-budget travel as browned skin or ethnic clothing. She was wearing a dark red sarong, tied loosely around her concave stomach, a droopy cheesecloth top, and leather flip-flops. Apart from the plastic bangles around her wrist, she had no jewelry. In many ways she looked like my fantasy of myself: a true traveler, her soft Western edges eroded by months or even years of vivid Third World Experience. As she pushed her fingers through her scrubby hair I noticed that her ears were peppered with a long line of holes. She told us her name was Coral, she was Australian, and she’d been in India for the last couple of years.
“You guys had a close shave there,” she said, grinning at us as she pulled her feet up under her skirt. “Perhaps your gear looks too new, you know?”
I grimaced.
“Yeah, it could be that. It could also be Gemma being a total twat. I mean, come on, Gem, why didn’t you tie the money belt around your waist like everyone else? Duh! That’s the whole bloody point!”
Gemma shuffled her feet uncomfortably.
“Oh, don’t look like that! I don’t mean it. I love you really!”
Leaning over, I gave her a loud, smacking kiss on the cheek. Coral gazed at us. Perhaps it sounded harsh to an outsider, but we always teased each other; it was part of our friendship.
“She’s never been to a Third World country before,” I added.
Coral glanced at me and smiled. Her face had the slightly sunken look of someone who naturally should have been more plump; her eyes were the watery blue of a young baby, her nose slightly snubbed.
“I carry all my stuff in this old thing. Like, it’s been around a bit?”
She nodded at her own bag, a scuffed canvas carry-all, which she had wedged onto the seat beside her.
“But how can you fit everything into that?” said Gemma.
“What is there you need? You’ve gotta travel light. What you don’t have you can borrow, or whatever . . .” She trailed off.
“I just don’t know how to thank you enough,” I said, then started to laugh. “Oh my God! I sound just like my mother!”
“It’s no big deal.” Coral flashed me another smile. “Where are you guys heading, anyway?”
“Calcutta.”
“Nice one.”
Gemma and I glanced at her.
“Why, where are you going?”
She shrugged lazily. “Wherever.”
“But you must have known that this train was going to Calcutta . . .”
“I don’t think so, honey.” She grinned again. “I just jumped on to catch you up, then off it went.”
Gemma goggled at her. I tried to look nonplussed, as if I traveled like that all the time.
“You mean you don’t have a ticket?”
“Nah.”
“But supposing you get chucked off?”
“No worries. There’s just one word you need here.”
“Which is?”
“Baksheesh!”
We laughed, shuffling over to make more room for her. To be honest, we were so relieved to have the belt back that we would have smiled at anything.
“Do you always travel like this, then?” I said as she pulled a paper packet of bidi cigarettes from her bag. I didn’t want to appear naive, but I was fascinated; it certainly put my book-throwing ritual in perspective.
“Me? It depends.”
Gemma was still staring at her.
“Aren’t you scared?” she said. Coral pulled a tiny bidi from the packet and leaned back, showing off her smooth brown throat.
“Get outta here! What’s there to be scared of? This is the most friendly place on the entire planet. Do ya want one?”
We both took a bidi, lighting them from Gemma’s matches and puffing curiously. They reminded me of my twelve-year-old experiments with Woodbines; the unfiltered tobacco made my head reel and my eyes water.
“Whew!”
“But don’t you get lonely?” Gemma was saying now. Her face had the utterly engrossed, almost dumbfounded expression of an infant watching something amazing and new, like a truck, or a cow in a field.
“Nah.” Coral laughed lightly. “There’s always loads of people to hook up with. Anyway, I’m used to it. I’ve been on the road a long time. I did Southeast Asia before.”
“Wow,” I said. “That must have been fantastic.”
“Sure it was. You should check out Cambodia. It’ll blow you away.”
Next to me, Gemma was peering down at her bidi.
“Fuck this thing. It keeps going out.” Throwing it on the floor, she looked up at Coral again. “I mean, I don’t think I’d have the guts.”
“It depends what’s inside, here . . .” Coral tapped her forehead. “Like if your thoughts are strong, then so’s your heart?”
“I don’t think I’m that good at strong thoughts,” Gemma mumbled. “I keep trying to whip them into shape but then they go all weak and wobbly on me.” She snorted. Next to her Coral’s face suddenly became serious.
“Well, you could learn to make them stronger,” she said. “I mean, like, you don’t have to always stay the same, do you?”
I thought she might laugh, but Gemma gazed into Coral’s face, her eyes intent.
“Don’t I?”
“No way. Hey, the world’s an open book. You can do exactly what you like.”
We were quiet for a while after that. Gemma pulled her book from her backpack, hunkering down on her seat and holding it in front of her like a shield. Coral produced a Walkman from her bag and plugged herself in, her face dreamy. On the surrounding benches, the other passengers dozed.
I stared out of the window, my thoughts slipping from the compartment to the blurring countryside beyond. As the half-built suburbs gave way to red fields and scattered villages, I felt the unpleasant haze of anxiety and frustration with which we had started the journey dissipate, just as fog lifts and clears in the dawning day. In its place grew swelling joy. Outside, the sun was setting, slipping low and crimson into the lunar landscape. In the mud-bricked homesteads fires had been lit, the smoke rising in fraying tendrils against the violet sky. As we jolted along I could see people moving around their compounds: women in brightly colored shalwar kameez squatting on the ground or leaning over the fires as they prepared the evening meal; men lounging on charpoys; small children who screamed with pleasure when they saw the train, running beside the tracks in a vain attempt to jump aboard. From time to time we passed a camel, or a couple of swaggering oxen pulling a cart. In the east, a single star had appeared.
As the sky darkened and the air cooled I wrapped my arms around my knees and closed my eyes. For almost as long as I could remember I’d been planning my escape. Over the last few years I’d felt increasingly as if I was biding my time, waiting for my real life to begin. It was true that I’d thrown myself at my degree in Sussex with an enthusiasm unrivaled by most of my peers. I loved to see how ideas fitted together, to bury myself in all those different worlds. Yet over the last year my joy at discovery had been offset by the need to get results, to produce long and painstaking dissertations, to fill my head up for exams. And now I needed to breathe again. What could books really teach me, I’d started to wonder. What I needed was real life, not librarie
s; what I was desperate for was a new challenge.
I pulled my sweater around my shoulders and finally began to doze. Despite my pretense to Gemma about being unfazed by the string beds, I’d hardly slept the night before and not at all on the plane. For a moment, just before my thoughts blurred, I pictured Coral walking down the aisle of the train. Then my hair flopped across my face and I fell asleep.
5
When the carriage grew so dark that she could no longer make out the words on the page, Gemma looked up from Middlemarch to find Esther slumped against the window and Coral sitting cross-legged beside her, the Walkman still clamped over her head. Putting the book gently down, as if afraid of physically harming the characters with whom she had spent such an intense two hours, she leaned over her backpack and started to rummage through it for a cigarette. She needed something to eat, too, for now that she was no longer so nervous the hunger that had been curling inertly in her belly was finally making its presence felt. She had not eaten all day. Perhaps, she thought wryly, she’d finally lose some weight. Peering inside her bag she noticed with regret that Esther had single-handedly demolished all the biscuits.
She wished that she could stop feeling so jumpy. She was pathetic, she told herself, unable to go on holiday without feeling her whole sense of self start to slip away. And yet she could not help herself. Unlike Esther, who’d been behaving as if she owned the place ever since the frigging airport, Gemma felt as if she was tumbling headlong from somewhere that at least she knew, into somewhere else entirely.
As she lit her cigarette she realized that Coral had taken off the Walkman and was watching her.
“Do you want one?”
Coral shook her head, smiling.
“So,” she said. “You like to read.”
It was clearly meant as an opening, but Gemma could not think of anything to say. Coral was looking at her expectantly, as if waiting for her to continue.
“I guess I’m just a bookworm,” she finally said. Before she could stop herself, she added: “I was meant to be going to Oxford to do English but I cocked the whole thing up.”
She swallowed self-consciously. She hated the way she blurted personal information at strangers, but the terror of being thought boring compelled her to do it. Coral was still looking at her.
“I guess that’s why I read so much,” she added lamely. It was nonsense of course. Gemma had always read prodigiously, Oxford or no Oxford. To change the subject she said, too brightly: “What are you listening to?”
“Ah, nothing.” Leaning over, Coral stuffed the Walkman into her bag.
“What do you think of it so far, then?” she said.
“What, this?” Gemma glanced around the carriage.
Coral nodded, her eyes still fixed to her face.
“Well, it’s great. I mean, to be honest, it’s a little intimidating, you know, when you first arrive and all that . . .” Her voice trailed off. “I mean, I guess you’re used to it.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve been on the road a long time.”
“Don’t you miss home?”
Coral’s eyes went dull and she looked away. Gemma dragged on her cigarette, blowing the smoke from the side of her mouth and tapping the ash on the floor.
“I don’t think I’m going to either,” she suddenly said.
Coral looked up at her, smiling. “No?”
“Not one tiny iota.”
They grinned at each other. There was another long pause. “That’s kind of what I’d figured,” Coral said.
“Yeah?”
“Sure. You like to hide it, but actually you’re, like, much stronger than people think?”
Gemma stared at her. “I don’t know about that. It’s Esther who’s the sorted one. I’m all over the shop.”
Still smiling at her, Coral shook her head. “Nah. You don’t really believe that.”
“Don’t I?”
“Sure you don’t. I can tell. You just let her think she’s in charge. Am I right?”
Dropping her cigarette on the floor and stubbing it out with the tip of her flip-flops, Gemma shrugged. Her face felt unnaturally warm.
“So how come you know so much?” she finally said.
WHEN I opened my eyes the world had turned green. It was dawn, and the train was chugging past a vast expanse of padi, the curving terraces divided into a lush patchwork. Although the sun had not yet appeared, the sky had lightened to a soft pink and the fields were filled with people. I stretched and leaned down to rub my legs.
It was distinctly chilly. I shivered, craving a warm mug of coffee and my sleeping bag, and suddenly noticed that Gemma was awake, too, curled up on the end of the bench with Middlemarch once more. She must have sensed me looking at her, for she slowly put the book down and looked up.
“Hi.”
“You’ve nearly finished it!”
Despite the racketing train we were both whispering. At the end of the bench, Coral was fast asleep, her head lolling against Gemma’s shoulder.
“Natch.”
“I don’t know how you can read so fast.”
“I should have paced myself.”
“You can read this if you like.”
I nodded at The City of Joy, my book about Calcutta. I had devoured most of it on the plane and was nearly at the end. It made the place sound so desperate and the self-sacrificing Westerners who’d devoted their lives to the poor so saintly that I was vaguely considering ditching the trip and going to work with Mother Teresa. Gemma glanced at it dismissively.
“Looks a bit worthy.”
“Nothing can be more worthy than George Eliot.”
“Ahah. But at least it’s good for the mind.”
She grinned smugly and turned another page. Sometimes—especially when we were talking about books or films—I felt as if she was still trying to prove something to me, even though we’d left school and were no longer vying with each other to be top of the class. Relax, I wanted to tell her. So you never made it to Oxford; I haven’t forgotten how clever you are.
After a while she sighed and put the book down. I could sense her watching me.
“Do you know the first thing I’m going to do when we get to Calcutta?” she suddenly said.
“Have a shower?”
“No, after that.”
“Give up.”
“Write to Steve!”
I looked down at my feet.
“I’ve been sitting here, composing what I’m going to say.”
“I should write home, too,” I said quickly. Gemma ignored me.
“Dearest Steve,” she intoned theatrically, “what are you doing stuck in that giant flea-pit commonly known as Stevenage New Town while I’m here, wandering the exotic lands of Asia?” She stopped, narrowing her eyes.
“Did I tell you what he said about me coming here?”
I fiddled with my nails, not meeting her eyes.
“No.”
“That he would do anything to be able to come, too. Isn’t that sweet?”
“He is a sweetie,” I said vaguely.
“Do you really think so?”
“Sure.”
Looking closely into my face she began to twist at the ring he’d given her.
“What do you think he’s doing now?”
“Getting pissed in the Royal Oak with all the other tossers.” I smiled at her determinedly. “Anyway, thank God we’re here and not there, eh?”
The comment hung quietly between us for a while, like a puff of smoke on a still day. Finally, Gemma picked up her book and carried on reading.
AN hour or so later we reached the outskirts of Calcutta. As the train began to slow it sounded its horn plaintively, the cry of a giant lumbering beast coming home.
“Voila. The Black Hole approaches.”
I smiled at Gemma wanly, reaching over her and fastening the money belt securely around my waist. Next to me, Coral was soundly asleep, her chin lolling on her chest, her mouth ajar.
“This time I’ll lo
ok after this.”
By now the suburbs were becoming increasingly crowded. The railway kept crisscrossing roads crammed with cars and people, and the huts with plastic bag roofs had begun to appear. After another few minutes we plunged into a huge shanty, the huts spreading out around the tracks like a rash.
I stared out of the window in shock. I was prepared for poverty but hadn’t imagined it would be like this. All around us were people: picking their way along the side of the tracks; crowding around the standpipes where they washed; sleeping; preparing breakfast in front of their makeshift huts; feeding their children; even shitting—right there in the mud as the train thundered by. No one paid the slightest attention to the Bengal Express as it rolled through their lives; it was as if the railway was such an organic part of their world they’d become oblivious to it: the trains came and went, like the passing of the sun across the sky.
I shifted uneasily in my seat, aware of my privileged gaze into the lives of others. Why had I objected to giving money to that little girl? I thought with a sudden, guilty pang. Wasn’t it the very least we could do? As I remembered the desperate way she had grabbed the cash I was filled with shame. Who was I to come here and impose rules about “not encouraging them”? It was just a weak excuse for being mean. I glanced uncomfortably away from the window. I didn’t want to admit it, but the slum was filling the carriage with an unpleasant stench. Opposite us, the old woman who had held Gemma’s hand in Delhi suddenly stood up and pulled the shutters of the window closed, pressing a handkerchief over her nose.
We were nearly at the station now. Gemma was perched on the edge of the bench, her rucksack a distorting hump on her back. Her eyes slid to Coral.
“Do you think we should wake her?”
“Definitely.”
Very gently, she reached out and prodded Coral’s thin arm. Her eyes opened immediately.
“Well, hi there. How ya doing?”
She smiled hazily and, standing up, hitched her bag around her shoulders. It was as if she’d been awake all along, I remember thinking. Either that, or she was so used to traveling by Indian trains that she intuitively knew that her station was approaching, the way a farmer might sense the oncoming rain.
