by Katy Gardner
I turned away from her, edging across the room toward the table and chairs. She walked unsteadily toward the door, then changed her mind, diving back toward the table to her bag, which she rummaged through manically, pulling clothes and books onto the floor in a heap. Finally she flung it down.
“What are you looking for?”
“Nothing.”
“Are you all right?”
“Sister, I’m fantastic.”
She muttered something else unintelligible under her breath then lurched toward the door. Taking a deep, meditative breath, she threw it open and stepped onto the veranda. The door slammed behind her.
I sat down at the table, panting with relief. From outside I could hear the monotonous dirge of chanting. It was enough to put anyone off meditation for life, I thought tartly; I should have followed my instincts at the outset: she was a weirdo. Determined to ignore the noise I pushed aside the orange peel, dog ends, and shredded tobacco, and pulled a large notebook from my bag. Placing it on the table, I frowned and started to write.
Dear Steve
Well, here we are in this amazing place in the forest . . .
I stopped, read what I had written, and scrubbed it out.
Dear Steve
How’s it going? I bet you thought you’d never hear from us so quickly!
Too jaunty. Why not get straight to the point?
Dear Steve
I thought I should write to clear up this “thing” between us. It’s been on my mind since we left the other week and I really want to communicate (wrong!) . . . to convey . . . (wrong) . . . to share (Yeuch!)
Cursing, I tore the page out of the book and twisting it violently with my hands threw the letter across the room. What did it matter what I wrote? There was nothing I could honestly say to make the situation better. I hadn’t wanted it to turn out like this, but the fact was that even running away to India couldn’t change what had happened.
Outside, the chanting had abruptly stopped. Coral’s head passed the window, there was a pause, and then it reappeared again; she was pacing up and down. I hated this place, I suddenly thought. In fact, I didn’t want to spend another moment here. I glanced at my watch. It was half-past twelve. If Gem and I moved quickly we could probably catch a bus later that afternoon. Coral could come with us as far as Bhubaneshwar, but after that, I would insist that we leave her behind. Once we were alone again, perhaps in Goa, things would improve. I would sit Gem down over a warm beer and tell her about Steve. Perhaps she wouldn’t be as upset as I’d anticipated.
I stood up, pushing my chair aside and stepping across the debris of Coral’s bag. From the veranda I could hear the clump of feet down the steps, then sudden silence. Peering through the wooden slats of the window I saw that she’d disappeared.
“Gemma!” I called gently. “Wake up!”
Darting across to the bed, I picked up Gemma’s arm and shook it. “Gem, let’s get packed up and go!”
She grunted and turned over.
“Come on, I can’t stand this place any longer!”
She sat up. For a few seconds she stared down at the bed, frowning and swallowing. Then slowly she turned round. Something was very wrong: her cheeks were ashen, her eyes glazed; sweat laced her forehead like dew.
“I’m going to be sick.”
She swallowed again, muttered something, and then suddenly clapped her hand over her mouth.
It was too late. Vomit spurted through her outstretched fingers, splashing my hands and splattering into a lumpy yellow puddle on the floor.
“Oh God!”
Leaning over the bed she groaned, then retched again. When she’d finished, she looked up. Her face was gray.
“I’ve got to get to the loo!”
Swinging her legs off the side of the bed, she stood hunched on the floor for a moment, took a few steps forward, and then suddenly clutched at her belly. “Oh no, oh shit, no!”
There was no mistaking the smell. I stared at Gemma in horrified pity as once again she doubled over and a thick glob of diarrhea slid down her legs.
AFTER I’d cleaned Gemma up, I helped her climb back into bed. The vomiting had temporarily abated, but her hands and cheeks were hot and sticky, her forehead clammy. She was delirious, too. She kept muttering incoherent sentences which I only half heard or understood. At one stage she struggled to sit up, saying loudly: “Not this!” then collapsed back onto the stained sheets, her arms clenched tightly around her stomach. Every fifteen minutes or so she groaned in pain, doubled up, and dragged herself back across the floor to the hole in the bathroom.
I hovered by the side of the bed, unsure what to do. At first I’d dabbed at her forehead with a wet flannel, but now even this was warm. There was no hope of replenishment: in the midday sun, the water trickling from the shower was steaming. I stood biting my knuckles and frowning as she squatted over the rancid hole in the bathroom for the umpteenth time. She was in serious danger of becoming dehydrated but we’d run out of bottled water. I thought I should give her some of the salts we’d brought with us, but I’d have to go back to the village and I didn’t want to leave her alone.
Gemma climbed unsteadily back into her bed, her eyes dull.
“Poor old poppet,” I whispered as she tried to straighten the sheets around her. “It’s just the shits. You’re going to be fine.”
She rolled over, her fingers reaching out at the wall.
“He’ll come back soon,” she said, her fingers tracing shapes over the cool stone. “It’ll be the end of it then.”
For a moment she seemed about to say something else. I leaned over the bed, struggling to understand. Then she closed her eyes and fell back. Finally, she was asleep.
She slept for hours, her face twitching and her lips forming incommunicable sentences as she moved through the impenetrable terrain of her dreams. I pulled a chair over to the side of her bed and sat watching her. Now that she was sleeping I should hurry down to the village but something—which, even now, I can’t fully explain—stopped me. I would wait until Coral returned, I decided, and send her out instead. I was Gemma’s true friend, not Coral, so I should be the one to stay by her side.
As the afternoon light dimmed, my eyes grew heavy and my thoughts began to blur. I’d opened the windows as wide as I could, but there was little breeze and the heat enveloped the bungalow in an oppressive fug. In the surrounding forest the insects heralded the approaching night. Unable to fight it any longer I closed my eyes. A few hours earlier I’d been determined not to spend another night here, but that was clearly what was going to happen.
However hard I tried to stop them, my thoughts slipped back to Steve. Over the last weeks I had been fobbing them off with constant movement and activity, but now that I was forced to be still they crowded unstoppably into my mind. I shouldn’t feel so guilty, I started to tell myself now. So, Gemma had a crush on him. And once, when he was drunk at a party, he’d pecked her on the lips. Did that mean he had to live like a monk? He’d never been her boyfriend, it was all in her head. She wore that stupid eternity ring like a trophy, but he’d only bought it for her because she’d run out of cash at Camden Market and he was too embarrassed to ask her to pay it back. It was me he was in love with, he’d told me so. And that evening, when I opened the door and saw him standing in the drizzle with his nervous, hopeful eyes, I knew there was no going back. I wanted to slam the door, to turn and run back up the stairs, but all I could do was stare.
Gemma, suddenly roused, sat up and looked around.
“Is Coral here?” she whispered.
My face stiffened. “No,” I said. “Not yet.”
Closing her eyes, she collapsed back onto the bed again.
I fell back into my thoughts. Steve had stepped into the hallway, his body so close that I could smell the cigarettes and rain in his hair. He’d placed a single, drooping snowdrop in the buttonhole of his jacket and was smiling. It wasn’t what I wanted to happen, I swear it wasn’t. But when he leaned acro
ss and gently pressed his lips against mine, I didn’t move.
14
Gemma saw him through the haze, his hands outstretched. For a moment there was calm, her mind peaceful as she remembered what they had agreed. Then the memory was obliterated and she was back at home, standing in the oppressive, dirty lounge.
She looked around carefully. It was the same as always, the place crowded with the furniture from the old house, the dust that no one had the energy to wipe away lying thick and furry over every surface. And there, she suddenly noticed, standing in the corner with her back to the room, was her mother. She stared at her sloped back, the baggy Marks & Spencer’s trousers, the long gray hair tied back with a rubber band, and suddenly understood. All this was her fault. She hated her, and always had.
Then the image fragmented and her body was shot through with burning pain. She opened her mouth to shout and felt herself being pulled roughly from the dream. There was something that she urgently had to do. Diving from the bed, she pushed aside Esther’s outstretched hands and stumbled toward the bathroom.
WHEN the door finally clicked open I jumped and turned round. I had been drifting in and out of sleep and for a moment didn’t recognize the person standing in the doorway.
“Coral? Is that you?”
“Sure is.”
She stepped into the flickering electric light. She had changed from her red sarong into a long orange kaftan and was smiling at me glazedly. For a moment I thought she was stoned, but her eyes were clear, her face radiant.
“What’s up?”
“Gemma’s really, really ill. She’s been shitting and puking nonstop since we got back.”
“My sweet child.”
Whispering something to herself, she stepped lightly across the room and laid her hand on Gemma’s forehead. She looked up at me, smiling serenely.
“Poor Gem. Poor you.”
I swallowed down the self-pity I’d been repressing all afternoon.
“We have to get some water for her,” I said quietly. “We’ve finished all the bottles and she must be getting really dehydrated. I’ve got some saline, too . . .”
“There’s water in that bag.” Coral nodded at a plastic carrier bag she had placed by the door. “And bananas and chapatis? We’ve got to make her drink.”
Leaning over the bed she gently put her arms around Gemma’s shoulders and pulled her up.
“Come on, my honey,” she said softly. “You’ve got to have something to drink.”
Gemma murmured something, her arm flopping over the side of the bed. Opening the bottle Coral held it to her mouth. She struggled for a moment, water dribbling down her chin, then, like a baby taking a bottle, was suddenly quiet. By the movement in her throat and the glug of the water in the bottle I could tell that she was drinking. I hovered behind Coral, biting my lip. I’m ashamed to admit it, but combined with my relief lurked something close to jealousy at how tenderly Coral held her. I’d been hopeless, I thought despondently; I’d just sat at her bed brooding about my problems when she was clearly desperately dehydrated.
When the bottle was almost empty and Gemma had finally turned her head away, Coral lowered her gently back onto the bed.
“You should drink, too,” she said over her shoulder to me. “It’s real hot in here.”
I took the bottle and gulped some water down. She was right, I’d been thirsty. When I’d finished I wiped my mouth and handed it back. Coral was staring at me intently.
“There’s a reason this is happening,” she said.
“You said it. And the reason is right there back at the shrine.”
She suddenly grabbed my hands, her eyes glinting. “That’s what I think, too! I’ve been meditating on this all day, willing you to believe . . .”
Her grasp was so tight that her fingernails dug into my skin. Glancing down, I noticed that they were encrusted with grime.
“You can be part of this, too,” she was saying. “You don’t need to be alone!”
I glanced quickly away from her eager, searching face.
“I don’t know what you mean. I’m not alone. I’m here with Gemma. All I want at the moment is for her to get well again.”
Coral smiled condescendingly and shook her head. “This is all happening because it was supposed to, Esther,” she said. “Don’t you see? We were like, led here, to this place? That fire you saw, the one you don’t want to admit? That’s just the first step.”
She smirked, her perfect, heart-shaped face with its pert nose and large, dilated eyes filled with conviction. I gazed at her, trying to think of a way of changing the subject. She’d been such a laugh earlier: who would have thought she was so utterly bonkers?
“That’s not what I meant,” I muttered.
She peered at me intently. “So what did you mean?”
“What I meant was that the reason Gemma is sick is because she was stupid enough to drink that frigging water. It’s typical of her. She never looks after herself properly. . .” I stopped, clenching inwardly with shame. How, when Gemma was so ill, could I even think about blaming her? What kind of a friend was I?
Coral’s face dropped. Shaking her head, she stepped back from me.
“You have to look deeper,” she said. “There’s a reason for everything.”
“Is there?”
“Sure there is. Now let’s try and get some saline down her.”
I walked across the room to my rucksack, rummaging through my gear until I found the Boots bag where I kept my malaria pills and aspirin and packets of bandages. Coral’s New Agey nonsense was really getting to me, but she was the only support I had; I’d have to try to be tolerant. At the bottom of the bag were some sachets of oral rehydration salts. Pulling them out I handed one to Coral, who took it with a nod. Squatting down, she poured the salts into the remains of the water, her face serious. I watched her give the bottle a vigorous shake. So what if she was slightly strange, I told myself. She’d been kind to us in Calcutta and now was helping us again. It was all going to be absolutely fine; Gemma would be better in a few days’ time; then we’d get away from this horrible place and enjoy ourselves again.
Coral walked back across the room and perched on the edge of Gemma’s bed. “I’ll give it to her in a moment,” she said. “Let all that water settle?”
There was a long silence. She sat holding Gemma’s hand as she murmured something vaguely melodic under her breath. Perhaps it was a song, perhaps a prayer. I couldn’t tell.
“So,” I said, trying to retain a semblance of normality. “Where’ve you been all day?”
There was such a long pause that I thought she hadn’t heard me. Then she suddenly said, “At the shrine, watching the burning.”
I looked at her in surprise. “What do you mean? What burning?”
She ignored me, leaning over and gently putting her hand on Gemma’s inert shoulder. “Come on, little sister. Drink this up, too.”
Gemma sighed, opening her eyes momentarily as Coral put the bottle back to her mouth. Coral was whispering something to her now, her head bent close to Gemma’s pillow. Finally she straightened up.
“It’s all, like, part of the transformation . . .” she said. “We purify and purify until there’s nothing left.”
I stared dumbly across the room at her. Perhaps it was irrational, for—as I kept telling myself—she’d brought water and food and was now doing her best to help, but I was starting to feel nervous again.
“That’s what the fire was for?” she went on. “Don’t you see? The only way she’s going to recover is by going back to the shrine and finding the heat again? The whole thing is connected.”
“What do you mean?”
She gazed at me, her face suddenly bright.
“When she’s better, we’ll take her there,” she said. “It’s always the answer.”
I couldn’t think how to respond. In the end I said, “I think I’ll go and get some more water.”
Striding across the room I threw the
door open and stepped onto the veranda. The evening air was warm and balmy. Breathing it in with relief, I started to jog down the hill.
Heat and pain in waves. With a huge effort Gemma pulled her eyes away from her mother’s back. Whatever happened, she thought, she must not see her. She turned, trying to force her feet to move herself back toward the door, but they must have got stuck on the floorboards. For some reason they wouldn’t move.
Suddenly she stopped. She looked around the room, her heart thumping. She always knew this is what would happen but when her eyes came to rest on the window, she still felt shocked. It was open, she realized now, and a breeze was blowing in. She shivered at the sudden cold, the fear dropping away from her like a shroud. Outside the window, looking in at her, stood her man.
At first he said nothing. His eyes were the blue of mountain skies, his hands outstretched. She stepped out of the pain and forward, toward him. Very gently he whispered her name.
I gasped and sat up. It must have been the stifling heat or the hike into the forest, but after my trip to the village I’d been overtaken by a lethargy so irresistible that I had fallen asleep on my bed without even removing my clothes. Now, in the deep core of the night, I’d been abruptly woken. There had been movement: the sound of voices and the creak of the door. Peering into the darkness I could make out the lumpy shape of Gemma’s sleeping body; on the other side of the room, Coral’s bed was empty. Holding my breath I swung my feet onto the floor. Somebody else was in the room.
“Coral? Is that you?”
There it was again: the soft shuffle of feet across wood. I thought I heard a sigh, or perhaps it was simply the whisper of the wind that rattled the windows.
“Who’s there?”
This time I was sure: from outside I heard the click of a car door, and the grumble of an engine starting up. Running to the door, I flung it open, but the veranda was empty; the only movement, a small animal scuttling across the path. Turning back to the room I saw with a jolt that Gemma was sitting up in bed, staring at me.
