Losing Gemma

by Katy Gardner

  As in Connaught Circus, I was feeling increasingly light-headed. I kept trying to block out my anxieties, to close down what remained of my rationality and simply go ahead and find the ashram, but each step I took felt more and more surreal, as if I was watching someone playing myself in a movie. It was for Gemma I was doing this, I whispered to myself, for our friendship. Yet as I plodded through the crowds I was increasingly overcome by an unease so visceral that I could taste it in my mouth, feel it tingling in my fingers. It was madness to come here, the voice in my head kept saying; I should have contacted the police in Delhi, or simply walked away when I saw Coral’s friends at the airport. What on earth did I think I was going to achieve?

  And yet I carried on walking. The ashram was supposed to be on the Kulu road and from the map I’d glanced at in the hotel foyer I was sure this was in the north. I turned off the main road, glancing over my shoulder as I cut down a narrow lane. Ever since leaving the hotel I’d had the prickling sensation of being watched, and now it was growing stronger. There was no one behind me, but I began to walk faster, my heart jumping.

  The shops and restaurants were thinning now, the road crossing a river and then climbing steeply. As the light dimmed the air was growing progressively colder. Ignoring my aching feet I marched away from the town center and up the hill. On my left was thick woodland, on my right a precipitous fall. At the summit I could see a hotel set back from the road among the pines; beyond that were more trees. I was getting closer, I was sure. I carried on walking, trying to ignore the shadows which danced in the corner of my vision. When I heard soft steps behind me, I spun around, panting in alarm, but it was just snow, falling from the trees.

  Beside me, the occasional car slushed slowly past. The sun had set now and grits of ice kept blowing in my face. Stamping my feet, I tried to blow some warmth into my hands. I would get to the top of the hill and then return to the hotel, I thought. I did not want to be walking alone like this in the dark, not surrounded by these crowding, petrified trees.

  I took another few steps, my breath billowing white. I was surrounded on both sides by firs, the only sign that I was on the outskirts of a town the large placards advertising hotels, airlines, and family planning campaigns which dotted the sides of the road. I glanced down the hill to the zigzagged road and buildings below and suddenly felt a hand land heavily on my shoulder. I shrieked, leaping around in horror, my heart exploding into a thousand, palpitating fragments.

  There was nothing there, just the low branch I had brushed against. Yet as I peered frantically into the firs I saw something else. Standing a few meters away from me, his body almost hidden by the dark trees, was Zak. He had been waiting for me, just as I had always known, and now was looking straight at me and smiling, his arms slightly outstretched. Around his body, flames flickered: golden snakes, writhing around his torso, ruby tongues, licking at his face.

  I gave a strangled cry and leaped back. My instincts were right all along, the voice inside me screeched; he had been following me and now was waiting in the trees, that same cold smile twitching on his lips. I should turn and run, I knew, but I could not move. My legs were frozen, my feet stuck to the frosty ground. I was nothing, all my plans and fears and memories reduced to this frigid, numbing terror.

  All this took place in less than two or three seconds. Then I must have blinked, for although I was still staring at exactly the same spot, he had disappeared. There was nothing and nobody in the trees: just the overhanging branches, stirred occasionally by the breeze and the last fiery rays of the setting sun, dazzling brilliantly through the tree trunks.

  I peered at the wooded hillside in confusion. I had seen Zak standing there, I was so sure. He had smiled at me and held out his hands, like an angel or a demon. And I’d stood transfixed before him, the world turning on its axis. And then suddenly he was gone and it seemed that I was wrong, that it was an illusion, like the strange apparition on the plane. I was raving, a madwoman who could no longer distinguish fact from fiction, who had become lost in her own fanciful narrative.

  I sobbed, turning and running back down the hill, my feet splashing through the sludge. It was all a terrible mistake, the voice screamed now. I should never have come here; it had unhinged me and now it was not Coral who was crazy and deluded but me.

  BY the time I reached the hotel I was shaking so violently that my teeth knocked together and my shaking fingers could barely grip my key. I dragged myself to my room, placing the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the handle before diving into the bed and pulling the thick brown blankets over my trembling body. I was frozen, so chilled that I instinctively rolled into a tight fetal ball, digging my tingling fingers into my armpits. I had lost contact with my feet long ago.

  Slowly, from the deep core of my belly, up into my arms and down my legs, a weak glow of warmth began to spread. I shifted slightly, feebly extending my feet an extra inch and spreading my hands out from under the blanket and over the cool cotton pillow. But even as the heat reached my fingertips and my toes began to thaw, I could not stop shaking.

  It was fear, I realized as I lay there: a freezing terror which had gripped me since Delhi and now was holding me against the bed with icy, probing fingers. Alone here in this wintry place I was going mad. Without stopping to think what I was doing I’d marched away from Steve, dumping him as unceremoniously as the aborted dates I used to have. And now I was wrestling with demons which, it seemed, came not from some macabre plot that I was about to heroically discover, but myself. Steve was clearly the only stable force in my life, the only thing which held me together. Without him I was lost.

  I turned onto my stomach, wrapping my arms around my waist as I tried to stop shivering. I had not let myself think of him since breaking free at the airport, but now I longed for the firm grip of his arms, his reasoned calm. What would he say if he was here now? That I’d made the whole thing up? That it was just as everyone else said and Gemma’s death was nothing whatsoever to do with Zak and Coral? Was my grasp on reality really so slippery?

  Whatever the truth, I could not face it. I was too weak, too much of a failure. Perhaps it was true that I could no longer bear the life I’d been living, but I simply did not have the strength to change it. Sure, the other Esther would never have been so defeatist, but she was gone. All that remained was for me to return to Archway and beg for Steve’s forgiveness.

  I snuggled deeper into the bed, my thoughts finally blurring. He had been right all along, I decided as I began to forget where I was, some things were best left alone. It was not too late to change my mind; first thing tomorrow I would leave this place and go home. Steve and I would pick up the pieces, just like we always did. We would make it up and I need never think about Zak or Coral or Gemma ever again.

  WHEN I next opened my eyes it was morning and my face was wet with tears. Dabbing uselessly at my slimy cheeks with the backs of my hands, I rolled over, staring around the room as I slowly remembered where I was. Diffuse light filtered through the thin hotel curtains; outside my door I could hear the sound of the floor being swept. Sniffing back the snot, I sat up, looking through the small boxy window to the white wintry sky beyond. I’d been dreaming of Steve, the memory still so vivid that for a moment I was confused, unable to distinguish between reality and the dream. I’d been in a phone box desperately trying to call him, but could not remember our number. When eventually I got through, the phone just rang and rang. He had left, and I didn’t know where he was.

  My relationship with Steve was over, I realized as the dream disintegrated, and that was why I was crying. There was no point in returning to Britain to seek his forgiveness, for I’d ended everything the moment I turned my back on him outside the airport. He was my best friend, my only friend, who had stuck by me through everything, offering the only support he had: consistency; patience; a solid, unquestioning kind of love. And I had tossed it all away, without even knowing what I was doing. I loved him, I really did. But we could not continue as a couple;
we had passed that point without even knowing it and now we had to continue our lives alone.

  I stared down at my unringed hands, my fingers white and wrinkled with cold and suddenly missed him so much that it hurt: a dull ache, deep in my belly, a longing for the reassuring bulk of another body pressed against mine. But as I blinked back another glut of tears I realized it did not mean what I first thought. It was true that I was lonely but it would not be Steve who could stop me feeling that way. My yearnings for him were based on fantasy, not on how things really were. Perhaps we had once been right for each other, but over the last few years we had started to bicker continually, a simmering low-level dissatisfaction which neither of us dared to admit. When he touched me these days I felt irritated, impatient, wanting instinctively to move away.

  Reaching for the roll of toilet paper I had tucked into the top of my bag I tore off a piece and blew my nose. God, I would miss him, but the truth was that I’d chosen to leave him behind, chosen to come here, chosen to be alone. It was not just an unfortunate accident; it was what I’d wanted. I splayed my fingers, clicking the joints and wiggling them as I tentatively swung my feet onto the hard stone floor. There was no point in being afraid about what was going to happen today. It was my fate, my dharma. And now it was time to find out what it was.

  30

  THIS time I took a taxi to the top of the hill, stopping it outside the hotel I’d passed the evening before and walking the final kilometer. I felt strangely calm now, the terrors of yesterday receding into what felt like the distant past. It was quite simple, I told myself. I was going to visit an ashram at an address on the Kulu road in order to find and speak to someone about an incident which had taken place five years earlier. There was nothing to be afraid of, not even my own untrustworthy mind. I’d had an uninterrupted night’s sleep, a breakfast of banana pancakes and yogurt in a backpackers’ café on the main street, and the paranoid illusions of yesterday were forgotten.

  I started to walk up the last part of the hill. Yesterday in the dusk I had seen only the towering shapes of the dark pines. Now, as I shuffled through the hard packed snow I saw that while the road zigzagged sharply up the woody hillside, a panoramic view of orchards and terraced fields opened out below. The scene was so pretty that I stopped for a while, gazing across the green brown valley and listening to the birds like any other tourist. Beneath me two small goatherds in long brown capes and bare feet were scrambling through the trees that clung to the hillside.

  I watched them chase the straggling goats back to the herd, their shouts and laughter only dimly resonating in my mind. Despite my attempts to block it out I was beginning to feel afraid again, my thoughts skidding nervously, my mind unable to concentrate. What would I find at the top of the hill? If Coral was there, what would she say? It was too much, I suddenly thought; too terrifying. I should return immediately to the café where I’d eaten my pancakes an hour earlier, spend the day reading month-old newspapers and drinking tea. I did not have to do this thing.

  And yet of course I knew that I did. After everything that had happened, how could I turn back? I stared up at the meandering, icy road. Just before the next bend was a turning into the trees. That would be it, I was sure. My heart was starting to beat a little harder, my palms to get clammy. Taking a deep breath I turned and started to climb the final stretch.

  As I approached the turning I saw a small wooden sign with the number two painted on it. When I reached it I stepped quickly off the main road, not looking back. After the exertion of my climb I was hot and now I pulled the shawl off my shoulders, transferring it to the crook of my arm. At first there was no sign of any building, the road progressing through thick, dark firs. Then suddenly there it was: a large, two-story house built in timber with a red pagoda roof. Leading to the front door was a flagstone path which someone had recently cleared of snow, piling it neatly at its sides; flower beds and what looked like rose bushes stretched beyond. On the far side, set back in the gardens, was another concrete building, perhaps an extra dormitory or a storeroom; at the back of this I could see more grounds, falling steeply away at the side of the hill. Sitting in a bed of gravel just beside the front door was a large bronze Buddha, his fat belly and beatifically half-closed eyes sprinkled with snow.

  This was it, I was sure. Ignoring my swelling queasiness, I strode through the garden toward the front door, fixing my eyes to the bamboo wind chimes that hung from the porch. It had started to snow again and all I could see were the crazed patterns of falling flakes. I took a deep, calming breath, but my heart was banging manically against my ribs. All I had to do, I told myself, was to knock at the door. After that fate or destiny or whatever one wanted to call it would take over.

  When I reached the door I stopped, staring blankly at the heavy wooden knocker as if I’d forgotten why I was there. I inhaled and then exhaled, tasting snow on my lips, my thoughts and feelings frozen, my heart so still it seemed temporarily to have stalled.

  “Just do it,” I whispered. Then, trying to steady my quivering hands, I placed my fingers around the knocker and lifted it. “I’m looking for Coral,” I said out loud, and it fell with a heavy thud against the door.

  My chest was hammering so violently now that I could hardly breathe. I clutched at my trembling hands, too terrified to even turn and run. From somewhere inside the house I could hear the indistinct shuffling of footsteps approaching. I wiped my hands across my face and nervously tried to smooth my hair. Just as I noticed that my shawl had been trailing in the muddy snow, the door clicked open.

  And there, standing before me, was Zak. This time it was not an illusion. There were no flames, no shivery shadows to claim him back, just the reality of a middle-aged ex-hippie in jeans and a thick Punjabi shirt standing in the doorway before me. He looked at me quizzically for a moment, and then an expression almost of relief passed across his face.

  “Hello there, Esther,” he said quietly. “We were wondering when you were going to show up.”

  I’M not altogether sure what happened next. I think I might have screamed, and I certainly stumbled, for Zak reached out and caught me, pulling me up and inside the house as I flailed at the air. Perhaps we stood like that for only a few seconds, or perhaps it was longer, yet as I clutched desperately at his arms I felt my whole history wash around me, each and every story I’d ever told myself swept over by a wave of something else.

  When I had finally regained my balance I stepped away from him. I’d gone beyond terror now, to that numb place where in a strange way, nothing mattered anymore.

  “I saw you on the train,” I croaked.

  He blinked, almost humorously. He had once suffered from acne, I noticed, for his neck was pocked with scars.

  “I thought it was you,” he said.

  I gulped. My heart had started to pound again. I wished it would stop, for it was preventing me from breathing properly, let alone speaking. I took another deep inhalation of air, as if I was suffocating.

  “Is she here?” I stuttered.

  He nodded. Then, before I had time to realize what was happening, his strong hand gripped mine and he was leading me outside. He was a man, not a devil after all; as my shaking hand was encased by his I could feel the pulse in his fingers, his roughened palm. He had a pen tucked behind his left ear, I noticed now, and a small blob of red sauce smeared down the front of his shirt. I stared at it, momentarily unable to focus upon anything else. Did evil cult leaders really spill ketchup down their tops?

  “Come on then,” he said, smiling paternally at me. “Let’s go and find her.”

  Taking my arm, he guided me silently along the icy path that skirted the side of the house. I followed him trustingly, my feet obediently moving one in front of the other. There was nothing left to resist, I kept thinking, nothing left to decide; all I had to do was what I was told.

  At the end of the path was a tall wrought-iron gate which stood between the main building and the outhouses and led to the grounds behind. Unlat
ching the gate, Zak stood aside.

  “She’s at the bottom of the garden,” he said. Very gently he squeezed my shoulder. Then he turned and walked back up the path. For a moment I was unable to move, my legs too heavy with shock. Then, taking another deep breath, I stepped through the gate.

  The first thing I saw was a large, snow-covered vegetable plot, the green tops of carrots or perhaps potatoes peeking through the expanse of white. Beyond this were a mass of bushes and trees and an area of icy earth that must have recently been cleared. Coral was not there. I started walking across the flagstones which led around the vegetable plot, gazing distractedly across the garden. To my left were more bushes and rough grass, to my right a small orchard of fruit trees. Perhaps this was where I was meant to go. My feet crunching on the frosty grass, I hurried through them and found myself facing a small enclosed lawn leading down the side of the hill. At the bottom was a newly planted arbor of trees, a makeshift shrine to another huge stone statue of Buddha.

  And there, squatting on the ground in front of the Buddha, was a robed woman, her hair wound into a long braid. I stared across the silvery lawn, unable to move. My heart had started to pound again, very, very loudly. Although she had her back toward me I immediately knew who she was, for I had learned the slope of her shoulders, the shape of her neck by heart. She was lighting a candle, I saw now, her hands cupped around a tiny flame. Leaning over she placed it on the stone pedestal, her head bent as if in prayer.

  I opened my mouth to call out her name, but nothing came. For a moment my whole life—everything I had ever believed and thought myself to be—revolved before me. Then pinching at my arms through my thick woolen shawl I took one and then two steps across the lawn. The woman stood, hoisting herself up as if her body was stiff, and slowly turned around.