Losing Gemma

by Katy Gardner

  “Please, excuse me. I have many bags.”

  “Sure.”

  Not bothering to look up, I shuffled a few feet further down the row. Ever since they spotted us at the airport Coral and the man must have been following us. It had all been part of a plan to rob us. But why go to such lengths to give the belt back? If she wanted to steal our gear, fine—I’d read about the drop-out druggies that preyed on other travelers—but why follow us onto the train? I shook my head violently, as if trying to dislodge some vital clue. Whatever Coral’s motivations, the fact was that we now had no traveler’s checks and no tickets home. The only money I had left was three hundred or so rupees, folded into my wallet.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck . . .”

  Sobbing quietly to myself I stood up. I knew I should try to calm down and focus rationally on the situation, but all I could think of was Gemma. I’d clearly made an appalling mistake. The row was irrelevant; all that mattered was that I’d abandoned my best friend to the clutches of two people who were clearly working together and wanted God knows what. I should contact the British High Commission, I suddenly thought. No, it was Sunday and the place would be closed. By the time I got to talk to someone anything could have happened. I had to get back to Agun Mazir and Gemma as soon as I possibly could. Pushing my fingers inside my wallet I slowly counted my cash. I had exactly three hundred and eighty rupees left, just enough to pay my fare.

  19

  THE Bengal Express was fully booked, so I bought the cheapest ticket on a slower train that left in under an hour. Wedged between countless other passengers I clutched my rucksack on my lap, willing the train to move faster as it slowly progressed through the city’s rail-side bustees. At least I had a seat; all around me people were standing, their collective bodies swaying like corn in the wind each time the train clattered over a rough section of track. People were hanging out of the doorways, too, and, judging by the thumps above my head, sitting on the roof.

  I was faint and wobbly with hunger, and so hot that all I could think of was ice and snow and the cold north wind. When the woman sitting opposite pulled a folded chapati and a couple of chilis from the tied ends of her sari I must have been gazing at it so longingly that she took pity on me and tore it in half. I accepted the offering eagerly, noticing for the first time the tiny baby clamped to her breast. She must have been on the edge of destitution, for her feet were bare and besides the infant and the food, she was carrying no luggage. We nodded and smiled at each other in fleeting comradeship as we chewed, our knees almost touching.

  The journey seemed to have no shape or form, nothing to distinguish the endless hours that dragged slowly by. The carriage was so crowded that I could only glimpse the window, but I was dimly aware of vast expanses of land chugging past, the villages and fields I’d watched so avidly a week earlier blurring into an endless shimmering vista of green and brown and yellow. Just as the train seemed to be finally gathering speed I’d invariably feel the drag of brakes and for no obvious reason it would slow and stop, sometimes for many hushed minutes. All I could do then was tap my foot and click my fingers impatiently as I willed the train to start moving again. I felt literally as if I was melting, my body sticky with the sweat dripping down my back and between my breasts. I’d begun to smell, and my hair was a crazed mass of curls, but it no longer seemed to matter. I had only one goal: to reach Calcutta and then travel onto Orissa as quickly as possible. I was panicking, you see, unable to think straight.

  I wished I could calm down, but it was impossible. Now that my worst fears had been realized—the money and tickets stolen, my only friend hundreds of miles away—my imagination was running wild. What in God’s name was going on? If it was our money that Coral wanted, why didn’t she simply steal Gemma’s money belt in Delhi and be done with it? I kept remembering the sense of being watched in the moonlit bungalow and the distant sound of the jeep and shuddered. I’d assumed that Coral was simply deranged, but clearly there was more to it than that. She had deliberately followed us, planning where we would stay in Calcutta and prebooking our room in Agun Mazir. Over and over again, I replayed the events of the past few weeks. In Agun Mazir the situation had seemed so clear, but now I could no longer remember why I’d left Gemma behind. Why did I always act so impetuously? I’d already betrayed Gemma with Steve, but now I’d done something even worse: I’d left her alone with someone who may be highly dangerous. I never stopped to think things through, I told myself bitterly; despite my gestures at caring, I always put myself first. It was I—the would-be traveler with my stupid degree and interestingly stamped passport—who insisted that the gods decide my destination, I who steam-rollered Gemma’s hesitations; I who had really got us into this mess. The whole trip was solely about me: my needs, my ego, and my adventure. No wonder Gemma was upset.

  I closed my eyes, drifting into a nervous, semiconscious sleep. I saw the shuttered doors and windows of the bungalow, gray smoke gently spiraling upward from them, and suddenly pictured Gemma lying in her bed as Coral walked slowly across the room toward her. With a screech of metal, the train jolted to a stop again. I sat up with a start, my eyes open and my heartbeating wildly. Whatever happened, I had to get back to her.

  THE train reached Calcutta in the early hours of the morning. I found myself an unoccupied patch of platform and huddled up with my rucksack among the other shadowy sleeping bodies. I was so tired that my eyes kept closing, my grip on the scene loosening until it almost slipped away, but I dared not let myself sleep. I had to keep my wits about me, I thought, otherwise God knows what might happen. I tried to pretend that it was all just an amusing adventure, a traveler’s tale to be embellished and narrated back home, but felt only a bottomless, swamping anxiety. I was alone and without money in a vast, unknown land and if I didn’t keep clamping it down, the formless fear which had been gnawing at me since Delhi would finally spring free.

  Gradually the light began to change, a diffuse pink hue spreading slowly across the quietened station. After a while the people around me began to stir; the crows that during the day pecked at the empty tracks cawing in the dawn. I sat up, gripping my knees and looking around. I was chilled and hungry. After paying my fare to Bhubaneshwar I had less than one hundred rupees left; just enough for a cheap meal and the country bus to Agun Mazir. My rapidly depleting funds terrified me. I was flying without wings: on the brink, at any moment, of tumbling catastrophically to the ground. Perhaps it was lack of food, perhaps lack of sleep, but I could no longer think straight; my thoughts kept leaping in different directions, my mind perpetually changing. I should have rung my parents in Delhi, I realized now, or contacted the police. Once again I’d made the wrong decision and now it was too late for I didn’t even have my return fare to the capital. If Gemma and Coral had already gone—and with this horrendous thought my stomach plummeted again—I’d be truly lost. Standing shakily I dragged my rucksack across the platform to the first chai wallah to set up shop, his urn of tea steaming over a newly lit fire.

  Finally the Orissa train arrived. Climbing wearily aboard I collapsed into the nearest seat. The other passengers pushed past. A week ago I’d been perpetually stared at, my presence shining bright and strong as heads turned in my direction. Yet this morning few people even glanced at the crumpled foreign girl huddled by the window. It was as if I was becoming a non-person, my bearings and identity lost as I faded into the distance.

  The train chugged on, the sun reaching up and through the barred carriage windows until it fell in slatted patches across my face. Pushing my rucksack against the window in an attempt to block out the light, I closed my eyes.

  THE train reached Bhubaneshwar just after sunset. I couldn’t afford a hotel, so spent five rupees on a rickshaw ride to the bus station where I had distant memories of a ladies’ waiting room. It was late evening now, and the town increasingly deserted, the food stalls where Gemma and I had dined a week earlier closed down, the shops shuttered and dark. All I had to do was get through one more n
ight and then I’d be on the bus to Agun Mazir and reunited with Gemma, I tried to convince myself as I paid the rickshaw driver and limped slowly across the road toward the bus station. If I found myself a dark corner no one would even notice me.

  The ticket office was closed, but a couple of late night buses were about to depart, their running engines filling the yard with fumes as the passengers inside slumped wearily against the windows. I spent another few rupees on peanuts, bananas, and chai from the vendors by the side of the road, then slowly walked toward the waiting room. As I glanced through its glass doors I noticed with relief that a couple of European women were sitting inside. From their clumpy sandals, drawstring cotton trousers, and blond hair I guessed they were German or maybe Scandinavian. I pushed open the door, smiling at them eagerly. I was desperate for conversation, for any contact with normality; perhaps, I thought vaguely, I might ask them for some kind of help.

  “Hi!”

  Swinging my rucksack of my back, I placed my tea on the floor and sat down expectantly. Like me, they had probably not been in India for long: their rucksacks were pristine and their Teutonic skin pale.

  “Hello.”

  The girl sitting closest to me smiled frigidly and looked away quickly.

  “Where are you off to? I’ve just got in from Calcutta . . .”

  Picking up my tea, I took a sip. The women glanced covertly at each other and shifted imperceptibly in their seats.

  “Puri.”

  “Oh yeah? I’ve heard that’s really nice . . .”

  They nodded coldly, then looked pointedly away, signaling an end to the exchange. A few awkward moments passed, then they stood up, pulled their rucksacks onto their backs, and walked out of the room.

  “Bye then.”

  They didn’t reply. The door slammed behind them.

  “Have a nice day.”

  I sipped at my chai, the strong, sweet liquid briefly reviving me. What did they think I was going to do to them, for God’s sake? I sighed, letting my body finally relax, and suddenly caught sight of my reflection in the glassed-over door.

  I looked like a junkie. My pale face was sunken and thin, my forehead covered in spots. Smeared across my cheeks and smudged in a black blob on the end of my nose, was what could only have been oil from the train. My hair, unmanageable at the best of times, sprang from my head in dusty dreadlocks. My eyes glinted back at me, the mad expression of a drug-crazed freak. Looking slowly down I noticed that my skirt was torn, my hands black with grime.

  I tried to smile, but under the sallow electric bulb of the waiting room only looked more psychotic.

  “Jesus Christ!”

  No wonder the Germans had scarpered, I thought grimly; they must have been terrified.

  I spent the next hour or so picking despondently at the peanuts. When a station official came to lock up the waiting room, he eyed me with distaste and pointed to the door. I didn’t have the money for even an attempt at baksheesh, so passed the rest of the night sitting on the pavement. When daylight finally came and the first eastward-bound bus rattled into the station, I climbed aboard with relief.

  Once more I gazed from the windows as the bus sped through the lowlands, the padi stretching endlessly toward the horizon, the sky wide and blue. After three or four hours it stopped at the eating house on the edge of the forest. I spent the last of my money on a plate of rice and dhal and tried to wash my face under an outside tap. The bus set off again and a few miles later the road started to climb and we plunged into the forest.

  I started to doze, my eyes jolting open each time the bus bumped over a pothole. I thought of the bungalow at Agun Mazir, Gemma’s dingy bedsit in Stevenage town center, and then, unaccountably, my mum sitting in the garden, a bowl of gooseberries balanced on her lap. I would never have thought it possible a week ago, but now I longed for home. Why had I thought that life in rural Hertfordshire was so boring? I’d have given anything to be there, topping and tailing gooseberries under the mild English sun. I blinked back the tears beginning to gather in the corners of my eyes. Without warning, I pictured Steve the last time I’d seen him, his collar turned up against the rain as he trudged down my parents’ drive. It should have been him with me in India and not Gemma, I thought with sudden, searing regret. Why in some misplaced gesture of loyalty to Gemma had I pretended to myself that he didn’t matter?

  The bus swung around a hairpin bend, its brakes squealing and its horn blasting so loudly that I sat up straight and stared out of the window in alarm.

  “Aiee!”

  In the surrounding seats passengers were craning their necks and pushing their faces to the window in an attempt to see what had happened. I peered down at the road in shock. From my place at the back of the bus it was hard to make out the details, but clearly we had narrowly avoided an accident. Hurtling toward us in the opposite direction another vehicle had suddenly appeared around the bend. Now it was partly tipped down the hillside, its front wheels whirring madly as it attempted to pull itself back on the road. For a moment I gazed at it dumbly, then suddenly I jumped up.

  “Let me out! I have to get out!”

  It was the silver jeep. I could just about make out the face of the shaven-headed man in the driver’s seat, his features narrowed in concentration as he stepped down hard on the accelerator. I stared at him in shock. My throat was constricting so tightly that I could barely breathe. And now I saw that in the back seat there was a passenger. Her head was leaning against the rear window, her face turned from the road, but as she shaded her eyes from the sun I could see the red and gold of Coral’s sari.

  “Coral! Wait!”

  But it was too late. Before I could push myself out into the aisle the jeep suddenly lurched back onto the road, gravel spraying from its wheels. I turned desperately back to the window, but too many heads blocked my view and then it was gone.

  AFTER that I couldn’t bear to sit still for a moment longer, so spent the rest of the journey hanging onto the luggage rack at the front of the bus. The driver kept waving his hand at me to sit down but I was so terrified of missing Agun Mazir that I didn’t dare take my eyes off the road. We passed through a large village which I recognized from before, came to the roadside shrines, and then climbed even further into the hills. Every time the bus rounded a bend I shouted “Agun Mazir?” but the driver just laughed and shook his head.

  It was late afternoon now, the shadows of the trees extending across the road, the light slanting and copper red. Any moment, I kept telling myself, and I’d be there. Finally the petrol pump and workshops came into view. A minute later we were in the main street of Agun Mazir.

  “This is it!” I screamed. “Stop the bus!”

  The doors wheezed open. Grabbing my rucksack I clambered down. From the sides of the bus I could sense the other passengers staring down at me. Some were grinning as if enjoying a good joke; others seemed to be shaking their heads in what I could only interpret as disapproval. They must have thought I was mad, or perhaps they believed all Western women behaved in such a demented way. Trying to ignore their curious faces, I waved at the driver.

  “Thank you! Good-bye!”

  Still laughing he revved the engine and the bus pulled away, its bald tires spraying mud across the road. Swallowing heavily I looked around.

  The mela was over: the pilgrims departed, the street empty. The only evidence of the previous crowds were the abandoned remnants of the stalls and a thick layer of litter. It must have rained recently, for dirty pools of water lay across the sidewalks and the drains were bubbling. Stepping gingerly over the banana peel, bits of paper, and broken clay pots, I walked across the road. With the exception of a thin, dreadlocked fakir lying on his back under the awnings of a shop, there was no one around. By now only a few last glints of sun remained; the far side of the road already lay in darkness and in the trees opposite a flock of birds were roosting, their dark bodies weighing down the branches like overripe fruit. Further up the hill I could hear the rhythmic th
ud of drums.

  I turned onto the track that led to the bungalow and started to hurry up the hill, my feet slipping on the muddy stones. Above me the sky was dipping from blazing orange into cooling blues and greens. The birds were quiet, too, the cacophony of voices I’d heard from the road fading into a single, plaintive song. I slapped away the mosquitoes which buzzed around my face. Above the trees the first star had appeared.

  “Please, God, let it be all right.”

  As I approached the bungalow I began to run, my heart leaping wildly. I turned the last corner and finally saw the stretch of rubbery grass and straight ahead of me, the clapboard building, its outline silhouetted against the deep blue sky.

  “Christ, I’ll do anything. Just let her be there . . .”

  Yet even as I ran up the path, I knew that I was too late. Ahead of me the windows of the bungalow were dark, its wooden doors bolted with a large metal bar.

  “Oh, God, no, please . . .”

  I leaped onto the veranda, throwing myself hopelessly against the door.

  “Gemma? Are you there?”

  But there was no reply, just the squawk and screech of the forest as it slipped into the night.

  20

  DUMPING my rucksack by the door I turned and ran back down the path. When I reached the first bend I stopped, gazing vacantly down the hill at the dark treetops and the scattered lights of the village. I must try to remain calm, I told myself; it could still be all right. Forcing myself to walk, I tried to focus my thoughts. I had to remain positive; there might still be a simple explanation. There was only one passenger in the jeep, so the likelihood was that Gemma was still in Agun Mazir; perhaps, like me, she had grown sick of Coral and found some other backpackers to hang out with. I should go back into the village and ask around. Even if no one had seen her, there might be a phone I could use. I glanced down at the jerry-built roofs and rickety television aerials below me, my heart sinking even as I tried to buoy myself up: even if there was a phone, who on earth would I call?