Losing Gemma

by Katy Gardner

  I don’t know how long I slept, only that some time later I opened my eyes to the wheeze of brakes. The train was slowing and finally stopping. Sitting up, I gazed blearily from the window. We had halted at a small hillside station and all along the platform people were jumping down from the train and stretching in the chilly morning air. From up the line I could hear shouts and the clank of doors; a few carriages down a chai wallah was moving slowly along the platform, a scarf around his head, a huge urn of tea dangling from his forearm.

  I remember rubbing my eyes and reaching into my money belt, thinking only of tea and biscuits. Then suddenly I gave a muffled gasp, jumping back into my seat as if I’d been scalded. What I had just seen made my heart turn over.

  On the platform, just a short distance down the line, was Zak, the man I had seen with Coral in Agun Mazir. He looked older than I remembered, his shaved hair grown out sandy gray rather than yellow, the hippie robes replaced by middle-aged slacks and a shirt, but there could be no doubt at all that it was him, for my memory had traced his face so many times in the last five years that I knew each and every contour by heart. I stared at him in stunned silence. His checkered shirt was so old that in places it had been darned with tiny, intricate stitches and the red bag he had over his shoulders was patched and stained with ink. On his feet were plastic flip-flops, their soles worn so thin that his feet might as well have been bare. He was buying a newspaper and had turned slightly away from me to pay the small barefooted boy who squatted next to a pile of Bollywood fanzines and Time magazines, but even though his back was now toward me, his erect, self-satisfied posture and short, tufty gray-blond hair were unmistakable.

  And then, almost as if he could sense someone watching him, he glanced round. For a second his eyes squinted in the slanting morning light, but then he seemed to focus on my face, and looking directly at me, with those cold blue eyes that I’d never forgotten, he smiled. And as my gaze met his I was suddenly overcome with a terror so raw that the rusty train window seemed to tip forward, the edge of my vision darkening. For the few seconds that our eyes locked I remembered Coral’s hunted mania in Agun Mazir, the fear I was now convinced I had seen in her face as she had stood before him on the sidewalk that hot morning of the mela. She had been taking orders, I was sure of it now. And when, a few minutes later, he had surprised me by the jeep he had stared into my face as if programming my features into his memory. If he was after Gemma, he must have been after me, too, I thought with a sick dread that rose and rose inside me like a river about to flood.

  “God, no . . .”

  Shrinking back into my seat I only stopped myself from screaming out loud by biting my lip so hard that I tasted blood. What was he doing on the same train as me? Had he heard from the others at the airport that I was on Coral’s trail? Or was it a simple coincidence? Sliding down into my seat as far as was possible without falling off it I swiveled around so that my back was facing the window, my eyes fixed now to the floor.

  “Is there anything the matter?”

  Opposite me the woman had taken off her sunglasses and was gazing across the compartment. I blinked at her. I felt sick, my guts dissolving with the shock.

  “No, I . . .”

  Daring myself to look out of the window again I peeked through the glass. In the moment or two that I’d turned away Zak had disappeared. I goggled for a moment at the newspaper boy, trying to catch sight of a tall male European frame, but saw only an Indian man turn away from the line, a paper under his arm, his hand in his pocket. Perhaps Zak had not seen me after all, I thought desperately. Even if he had, he would surely not recognize me, not after all this time.

  “Are you perhaps unwell?” said the woman.

  I gazed at her dumbly. Now that she had taken her sunglasses off and I could see her unlined, rosy face I realized that she was no older than me, perhaps even younger. She was watching me closely, her eyes filled with concern. Pulling a flask from her bags she unscrewed the top and started to pour out a cup of tea.

  “Here,” she said, offering me the plastic cup, “Have some.”

  I nodded and took it, trying to prevent my trembling hands from spilling the steaming brown liquid. Zak would never have recognized me, I kept telling myself, and nor would there be any reason for him to follow me. In my anxious, sleep-deprived state I was letting my imagination run wild. I gripped at my beaker, trying to breathe more normally.

  “Perhaps it is your tummy?”

  “No, really, I’m fine.”

  I forced myself to smile, taking a sip of the sweet strong tea. When we reached Simla I would wait until everyone was off the train until disembarking, I decided, just to be sure. Finally I could hear the doors of the train slamming shut and it started to chug forward.

  “And where are you heading?” the woman was saying. “You are . . . on holiday?”

  She nodded at me expectantly, her eyes taking in my cheap plastic rucksack and the clothes I’d bought so hastily in Janpath Market.

  “No, no, I’m not on holiday.”

  “So you are on a tour of duty? Do you perhaps work for a voluntary project?”

  “No.” I shook my head, wishing the questions would stop. “I’m just visiting a friend.”

  “How lovely!”

  “Yes.”

  “And your friend . . . she is Indian?”

  “No, no, she’s not . . .”

  I swallowed uneasily, gazing away from her face to the three small boys, curled up beside her. I knew I was expected to say more, but could no longer bear her kind curiosity. All I could think—over and over again like a neurotic obsessively washing her hands—was that Zak was on the train and had seen me. And now he would do whatever he could to prevent me from reaching Coral.

  No, I was being ridiculous. I smiled wanly at the woman and asked if she had been to Simla before. She was saying something about her birthplace and her sons needing to see their grandparents but all I could do was gaze blankly back at her warm, attentive face. When I suddenly shivered, rubbing my hands over my arms at the cold air which was now rushing through the window, she stopped in the middle of her sentence.

  “You are cold. Please, accept this.” She held out her shawl.

  “No, no, I couldn’t possibly . . .”

  “Please. I insist. I have a hundred such.”

  She pushed it into my lap, making it impossible to return.

  “If you refuse I shall be hurt.”

  Finally I took it, draping the soft warm wool around my shoulders.

  “Thank you . . .”

  “Please, you are a guest in my country. And I think you are in some kind of trouble. You must keep it.”

  I glanced at her, my eyes hot with tears.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said.

  We were both quiet after that, as if words were no longer necessary. After a while the sun slipped through the window and the train began to climb, the track meandering around countless hillside bends. I stared fixedly out of the window, trying to remain calm. Something was waiting for me in the hills and I was moving closer to it. It was the end of my story, the grand finale.

  28

  WHEN the train arrived in Simla I pretended to the woman that I was meeting a friend and so would not need to share her father’s car to the town center. Busying myself needlessly with my passport and tickets I hung back as she gathered up her children and finally swept out of the compartment. I watched from the window as they hurried across the platform. I did not even know her name, let alone the finer intimacies of her life, but during those brief moments I would have given anything to have swapped my position for hers. We were about the same age, yet she seemed to be in a world which for me seemed forever consigned to fantasy, a kind of settled certainty about who she was and what her life was for. Perhaps it was easier to be in a culture where marriage and children were more or less taken for granted, I thought as I saw a large man in a white uniform take her bags; perhaps I’d always had too much rather than too little choic
e. And I’d made such a hash of it. I was no longer a very young woman on the brink of her life; I was nearly thirty, for God’s sake. I should be at least edging toward some loosely defined state of attainment and maturity. Yet I had no plans, desire, or ambition. I could as much imagine myself being a mother as having a career.

  After a while the platform emptied, and gathering up my few belongings and what was left of my courage I climbed off the train. There had been no sign of Zak, just a rush of Western tourists and Indian holidaymakers. It was safe, I told myself as I scuttled toward the last remaining taxi; Zak was nowhere around.

  SIMLA reminded me of the Lake District, although in reality it was nothing like it at all. The hill station spread along a steep mountainous ridge: a mass of wooden houses which dwindled down the hill into a periphery of muddy clapboard shanties. On the horizon I could see the outline of the Himalayas, their jagged, icy profile stretching into the illusion of infinity. Yet as I wandered down the central Mall the next morning I could not shake off the sense that I’d been transported into a strangely skewered version of Edwardian Britain, with its neat churches, tearooms and oddly reminiscent English architecture. Perhaps that was what the Empire was all about: the transplanting of little bits of fossilized Britain all over the world until it seemed completely normal that the locals use words like “spiffing” and “opine” and every transaction was wrapped around with a creaking, Byzantine bureaucracy that served no purpose but to reinforce a dusty colonial ideal of hierarchy and order. Even the middle-class Indians promenading the Mall looked like 1950s English tourists, the ladies with their gloves and heels, the gents with their cameras and sheepskin coats.

  I turned down an alley of steep steps and began to descend the hill. At the bottom, the cheery lady in the tourist information office had assured me, I would find the bus station. From there I could catch a tourist bus to Manali: it left every day at ten A.M. The journey took about eight hours, depending on the condition of the roads.

  I shivered, running my fingers through my wet hair. The day before the sky had been clear, but this morning a thick mist had descended from the hills, covering the town with a light gauze of drizzle. I’d bought a heavy cotton shalwar kameez, a button-up cardigan, and a thick pair of hiker’s socks, all of which I was now wearing, but I was still cold. I shuddered again, pulling my shawl around my shoulders.

  I found the bus stand easily: my eyes immediately picking out the handful of Westerners waiting by the side of the road. They were the usual traveler types: a young guy wearing a Nepalese cap and flip-flops over woolly socks; an Australian couple who sat clumsily on the sidewalk with their arms proprietorially around each other, and an older, white-haired woman in a kagool and climbing boots. After checking that they were waiting for the same bus, I stood a little further down, staring determinedly at the drain so that even the woman, who kept glancing in my direction in a friendly way, was unable to make eye contact.

  I did not want to exchange travelers’ information, to tell her where I’d been and where I was going. For ever since losing Gemma I have fallen out of the habit of easy chat. At work, when the other girls eat their sandwiches in the park or pop out for a fire-escape smoke, I remain alone; I cannot pretend to converse in the open, empathetic style of other women, swapping intimacies as casually as travelers compare the places they’ve been. My story is different: no one can offer the comfort of another, similar tale; when I do try and tell it people look horrified or embarrassed. Even worse, they tell me they know how I feel. I don’t need friends, I tell myself; not anymore.

  When the bus arrived I found myself a place at the back, wedging my bag firmly on the next seat so that the kagool-wearing woman would not be able to share. As we finally pulled away I slid down in my seat, resting my head against the steamy window and closing my eyes. Locked safely into my hotel room in Simla I’d begun to feel better but now a tight, nervous feeling was starting to build in my gut. I was hurtling toward Manali as if all I needed to do was locate Coral and discover “the truth,” but now that I was growing close I was becoming increasingly anxious. Supposing she was not there? I clutched at my knees, my fingernails digging through the cotton trousers into my skin. Supposing that she was?

  The bus progressed through the fog, the looping road climbing ever higher until the mist furled below and above the mountains the sky turned icy blue. Since Simla the road had been clogged by a line of lumbering trucks, their flanks painted with pictures of planes and plump film stars, their perilously high loads held down with tarpaulins. Now, as it narrowed and folded into a series of ever tighter bends, the flow of traffic seemed interminable. I shivered and wiped at the window with my hand. We had been on the move for three and a half hours and still all I could see were steep-banked hills and trees.

  The bus turned another bend, its gears grinding laboriously as the truck behind accelerated noisily past. It was a miracle that there were not more accidents, I thought hazily as it narrowly missed a crowded car suddenly appearing in the opposite direction. In the old days I’d have spent the entire journey gripping the edge of my seat, unable to tear my eyes from the road as if somehow my watchfulness was necessary for our safe passage. Now I looked away from the scene with disinterest.

  Resting my head against the plastic seat, my thoughts began to jump ahead. If Coral, or Santi, or whatever she called herself, was in Manali, would she ever agree to talk to me? And if she did, what would she say? I tried to imagine what she might look like after all this time but all I could see was her crazy bridal gear in Agun Mazir, the restless twitching of her hands. She had not been on drugs at all, I realized, she was ill—just like the crazies who drifted around London, or the pathetic, lost patients Steve administered to. Why had I not recognized it before?

  And if she had been ill then, what state would she be in now? Would she be coherent and recovered, with memories that could save me? Or would she have vanished into the depths of the ashram, a ranting devotee, unable to convey a thing? I shivered and rubbed my hands together, the doubt seeping through my previous certainty with increasing force. I’d pictured myself knocking on the door of what I now thought was a badly imagined version of the Buddhist Center in East London, and Coral answering. Then—but I had not thought any further than this. What was I hoping that Coral would tell me? That she and Zak had plotted to murder Gemma? That her death really was some kind of accident, that it was nothing whatsoever to do with me? If I wanted absolution, I realized, I would not find it. No, a total reprieve was not an option; the most I could hope for was some different version of the truth.

  Outside the window the road was becoming increasingly mountainous. On one side was the rock face, the road scattered with scree and the occasional boulder and on the other, just a short distance from the wheels, a sheer drop of some five hundred meters or so to the valley below. I peered through the grimy glass at the breathtaking view, noticing with voyeuristic horror the battered remains of a bus lying on a ledge halfway down the cliff.

  I tried to picture Gemma the last time I had seen her alive, but while in Britain I’d been unable to escape her image, ever since I had gone through immigration in Delhi I’d been unable to summon it up. As I tried to recall how she had looked in Bhubaneshwar, or later, in Agun Mazir, all I could muster was a blurred picture of the back of her head as she walked down the forest track. The more I tried, the more the memories, slipped and slithered away. Even the image of her face when I’d finally and irrevocably stormed out of the bungalow disintegrated. Anyway, it would have been impossible for me to have seen her expression, I saw now, for as I had left the room she would have been behind me. As for Coral, I had no idea how she looked.

  The person I did remember, however, was Steve. Each time I thought of Gemma his image shoved its way assertively into my mind. I pictured his face at the airport as I’d been leaving him, the distressed droop of his mouth and the way his hands had dropped helplessly at his sides. He had worked so hard for that holiday, planned it for so
long, and I’d ruined it, just like I ruined everything. Poor Steve, he deserved so much better. What would he be doing now? Would he have continued, alone, to our prebooked hotel in Phuket? Or would he have gone home, back to our small, untidy flat in Archway? And when I eventually saw him again, what would he say?

  I blinked, forcing the thoughts away. I would sort it out when this was all over, I told myself. It would be okay; he would forgive me. Yet suddenly I wanted to cry. I missed him, I realized, with a rush of regret and longing. I thought that I didn’t need him, but I was not used to being alone. It made me feel out of balance, vertiginous even, like a rock climber whose partner has fallen. And now, stretching above me, my supports clattering in the valley below, was this vast mountain.

  29

  THE bus reached Manali in the late afternoon. I checked in to the nearest hotel: a large characterless block just after the bus stand which charged five hundred rupees for a soulless twin room overlooking the hustling street below. The management claimed there was hot water, but when I ran the tap it spurted icily over my hands. I waited for a few minutes then turned it off. I did not care; I could shower and rest later. I tucked the pamphlet and my cash into my money belt, dumped my bag on the bed, and walked out into the cold, early evening air.

  There must have been a recent fall of snow, for despite the heavy traffic the central Mall was white, the fine powder underlaid with treacherous slicks of ice. I trudged across the road, my feet stinging with cold. The place was thronged with people: tall, pale-skinned men with ponchos and woolen caps who warmed their hands on clay pots of smoldering coals; Buddhist monks, in red robes and sandals; Tibetan women with long rainbow-colored pinafores and heavy, clanking jewelry. The road was lined with stalls selling Kulu shawls and Ladhaki caps to the hippies and innumerable hotels and cafés, their windows steamy. Whenever I passed a backpacker I scurried on, my face averted.