by Katy Gardner
He put his arms around her, and she let him pull her up. She was deeply chilled, her body damp and shivering.
“She’s gone,” she whispered. “She and Esther took off for the south.”
She looked up at his face. For a moment it seemed to change, a flicker of uncertainty or surprise momentarily disturbing the calm glaze of his features. Then it was gone, a fragment of evaporating cloud in a clear sky. He had not noticed the burnt bushes, or the candles and scattered matches, or the pile of leaves a few meters from where she was lying.
Leaning her head on his shoulder she took a faltering step toward the path. She could hear the beat of his heart, sense the warmth of his skin through his thin robes. He was hers now. Nothing and nobody would ever come between them.
“And you waited for me,” Zak said.
“And I waited.”
“But why are you here? I was looking everywhere.”
“It was the mela. I wanted to see it. I got confused.”
“And look, you’re so cold. You could have died.”
And then he was pulling Coral’s sari from the bag of their things he had already packed and wrapping it around her and almost carrying her up the hill toward his waiting jeep. When they got there he lifted her carefully into the back, as if she was a doll. She laid her head against the seat as they accelerated away, the breeze rushing against her face. Already her temperature was falling, the sickness fading, her thoughts stabilizing.
After that, they drove and drove, until the road was dark and stars arched over the jeep like signs of hope. Gemma slept and woke and slept again until finally, toward the end of the next day, she was able to sit up and look around. She wound down the window, pushing her face out at the cold, sharp air. On the horizon she could see the mountains.
It was over: the nausea had gone, her thoughts were clear, and the old Gemma had disappeared. The past was finished with now, all those early years of loss and bitter craving and she was someone else entirely: a woman without a history, a woman who was not afraid, who would never look back. She was the person I am today.
That’s right. This is my story, and as I stand in the garden looking into Esther’s face I know I’ll never repeat it to her. Why should she know what happened? What claim does she have over the truth? She’s never understood me, despite her protestations of intimacy, never been aware that there may be more than one version of the past. And she could never have achieved what I have over the last five years. She’s far too soft and flighty for the hardships I’ve endured, for the way I’ve turned away from all those superficial distractions of my old life and found out who I really am, this woman of strength and certainty.
And she would never have won Zak over in the way that I did, either, however attractive she used to be. It took a while, especially when he was so confused about Coral’s disappearance. He had been trying to break free of her attachment for months, he told me later, but she was so troubled, she always needed him so much. And now suddenly she was gone and he did not know how to feel. So I waited. And while he tried to work things through, I made sure I was always at his side. It was meant to happen, that was what I told him over and over again. It was kismet, our fate.
And now Esther’s here, standing in the garden we dug from the mountainside, crying rapturously, as if I was risen from the dead. It’s a shock, however I tried to prepare myself. Zak told me he saw her on the train and I’ve been waiting for the last couple of days, not sure what I’ll feel or how I’ll react. Yet she’s changed so much that had I not known I might hardly have recognized her: her famous beauty shriveled and diminished, her long hair gone, and her thin face drawn and harried. She keeps clutching at my hands and crying and saying how she’s missed me and she loves me. And the strange thing is that I feel nothing. Not even anger.
33
AFTER I’d just about managed to stop crying and let go of Gemma’s hands she tucked them into the rough pockets at the front of her robe and stepped back, smiling almost politely. She had obviously been outside a long time, for her cheeks were ruddy with the cold, the tip of her nose pink.
“Perhaps we should go inside,” she said. “It’s freezing out here.”
We walked back across the lawn and through a door into the kitchen. I was still too shocked to speak, or to make sense of anything. I kept taking sideways glances at Gemma, still not wholly believing that it really was her who was accompanying me into the building. Yet the calm-faced woman with the long brown braid who strode slightly ahead of me could be no one else. It was the rounded slump of her shoulders which gave her away, the way she swung her arms as she walked, the dimple in her chin. It was like being in a dream: for so many years she had haunted me and now I kept expecting to suddenly wake and find myself lying next to Steve’s somnambulant body, the sound of London traffic outside. And yet it was real: she was really here, my fantasies of murder unfounded. Already I felt lighter, the oppressive weight of an imagined history lifting and dissipating into the wintry sky. Wiping at my eyes with the edge of my shawl I glanced at the gleaming pots and pans, the stone sink, and huge oval table already laid for lunch with rows of stainless steel plates and cups. Stacked against the wall was a pile of folding chairs. It was like a youth hostel, I thought fleetingly; so bare and unhomely.
I followed Gemma out of the kitchen into a large whitewashed hall, wincing at the plummeting temperature. Like the kitchen, the hall was empty of comfort or clutter: a functional space for a functional institution. The only decoration was a huge carved Ganesh resting against the opposite wall, a handful of rose petals scattered at his feet. The air smelled faintly of incense.
“Don’t worry,” she called over her shoulder. “We’re going somewhere warm.”
Her boots slapping the stone tiles, she hurried across the hall toward the stairs. When she reached them she turned left, down a short dark corridor. Opening a door at the end of this, she stood aside.
The room was lit with candles. I stepped inside, my eyes adjusting to the shimmering light. The floor was covered with a thick Kashmiri carpet; worn silk bolsters were stacked against the walls. On one side of the room was a massage table; on the other was a small bookcase filled with bottles of oil, books on Buddhism and the Tao, and a brass incense burner. Squatting down, Gemma lit a small stove in the far corner.
“It’s our therapies room. It should warm up soon.”
She sat on the floor, her legs crossed, her back resting against the wall. I stared at her, still too disorientated to speak. Like a much-loved garden revisited after many missed seasons of growth and planting, she was both completely different and exactly the same. Her hair, so long dyed and cropped and spiked now fell in a heavy and loosely tied braid down her back, and without the eyeliner her eyes seemed larger and more alive. Her body had filled out, too, giving her the appearance of strength and substantiality rather than fat. Age suited her; the few lines around her eyes and mouth adding depth to her face, her expression somehow more settled and calm.
And yet she was still Gemma. As she folded her hands in her lap and gazed down at her small booted feet, her eyebrows furrowed in exactly the same way they had done when she was five, her small lips pursing. She still had a mole just above her right eye, and that dimple in the middle of her chin filled me with such nostalgia that I had to bite my lip.
“You look fantastic,” I blurted, instantly regretting the triteness of the comment. Five years earlier she would have blushed and snorted in denial or perhaps returned the compliment, but now she simply nodded, her eyes unreadable. There was a long pause. I gulped, my fingers twisting with embarrassment. Since we had sat down my initial elation had been increasingly superseded by a sharper, more uncomfortable emotion. There was so much to say, so many questions and apologies and explanations; speeches I’d imagined reciting a thousand times, but now that a miracle had occurred and Gem was alive and sitting in front of me, her chapped hands so close I could reach out and touch them, her cheeks rosy from the mountain air, I could
n’t recall a word.
“Look, I’m sorry,” Gemma suddenly said. “I know you’ve come a long way, but I won’t be able to chat for long. I’ve got to lead the devotion before lunch.”
I stared at her.
“I can’t believe you’re here,” I started to say. “All this time, when I thought . . .”
She cut me off, her voice businesslike. “So where are you staying?”
I blinked at her in bewilderment. Why was she talking to me like this?
“Just this crap hotel, I . . .”
“We’ve been expecting you all day. Poppy said someone had been asking after me in Delhi and then Zak thought he saw you on the train? He said you tried to hide under the window when he caught your eye . . .”
She smiled at me, her lips twitching with what I could only interpret as amusement. I stared at her numbly. An unpleasant pressure was beginning to push down on my chest.
“I was confused,” I muttered, glancing down at her white hands, her thick hemp robes and boots, doing anything but meet her eyes. My hands were beginning to shake again, my teeth chattering not with cold, but with something more profound. Gemma was silent, waiting for me to say more. Throwing my arms around my shoulders in an attempt to stop them from trembling, I mumbled, “I just can’t believe you’re here.”
She did not respond. The shaking was overtaking my entire body now. I hugged my knees to my chest, unable to prevent the violent knocking of my teeth, the uncontrollable juddering of my shoulders. She gazed at me detachedly. After a moment or so, she said, “Perhaps we should get you a cup of tea or something.”
I kneaded at my hands like uncooked bread.
“I’m fine.”
“You’ve had a shock,” she went on. “And now all that pent-up energy is being released. It’s part of the healing.”
“The healing?” I echoed faintly.
“Isn’t that why you’re here?”
“I don’t know.” I took another deep breath, my eyes suddenly smarting with hot, unshed tears. “I was searching for someone, but . . .”
I stopped, unable to continue. Who had I been searching for? If only I could stop myself from shaking so badly I might be able to put my jumping thoughts into words, but all I could do was look away from Gemma’s smug, closed face, and mumble: “What are you doing here?”
She smiled, not in the blissed-out, blurry way of the woman at the airport, but with the condescending patience of someone explaining the basics to a novice.
“It’s where I’m meant to be. If you’d wait until our Baba gets back you’d understand. He’s the light, and we’re the ones who hold him up.”
I stared at her, my mind suddenly snapping to attention. It sounded like utter hippie nonsense, not the kind of stuff my Gemma would ever have spouted.
“Baba is the light?” I repeated slowly, letting go of my knees and sitting up straight. The trembling was subsiding now, my shoulders and hands finally becoming still. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d be into something like that.”
“Like what?” She smiled at me tightly.
“All this . . . cult stuff.”
“It’s not a cult. It’s just an ashram, where we follow our master, and learn how to live.” She regarded me with kind sympathy, the way one might look at someone less privileged than oneself. “Unfortunately it’s not something most ordinary people are open to,” she said. “It’s about belief and commitment, and letting the old stuff go.”
I nodded, understanding only that she was somehow boasting.
“I have to say though that a lot of what’s happened here has been because of me and Zak. I mean, all the followers Baba has now. We’ve got over twenty sanyasis living here full time and loads more passing through.” She tossed her head with what I could only interpret as pride. “It’s one of the most successful ashrams in this part of India. Zak runs it for Sai Baba when he’s away on his tours, which these days is nearly all the time.”
“Zak runs it . . .” I said vaguely.
She snorted, and for a second I saw a glimmer of the old Gemma, the one I used to know. “He thinks he runs it. Or rather, I let him think he does. You know we’re a couple now?”
There was another long pause. It was ridiculous, for my mind was crammed with questions, yet something in her face made asking them impossible. It was as if I was a vague acquaintance of hers, someone with whom what connection there might once have been had long since withered and died.
“I knew you’d find me in the end,” she suddenly said, and I glanced up at her, my face flushing. “I didn’t want you to, but I knew you would.”
I frowned. “I wasn’t actually looking for you.”
“No?”
“I was looking for Coral.”
She shrugged, her eyes flicking dismissively to the fire.
“She was a nutcase. Why would you want to look for her?”
She was still smiling, but something in her voice was harder and at the mention of Coral’s name she had inadvertently bitten her lip. I stared at her, my resolve beginning to grow.
“I thought she might know what had happened to you,” I said. “For the last five years I’ve thought that you were dead . . .” I stopped, unable to control my voice as I suddenly pictured the blackened stump of hand, the humped, scorched corpse that I had thought was her. Gemma gazed resolutely at the floor. “Well, I’m not dead,” she finally said. “I’m more alive than you could ever imagine.”
She glanced up at me and in the brief moment that our eyes met I thought I saw triumph. I looked hastily away, my mind whirling. It was too much to take in. I’d been so sure of my story, but now it seemed that a large chunk of the plot was missing, the central characters cut suddenly adrift. On the wall the shadows spluttered and jumped, just as they had done the terrible morning I’d woken to Coral’s ring of fire.
“So what are you saying?” I whispered. “That it was Coral who was killed?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Anyway, it’s all in the past.”
“But I saw her in the jeep. On the road back to Bhubaneshwar . . .”
“No, that must have been me.”
“I don’t understand . . .”
“It was me. Coral ran off somewhere. She was unstable, a nutter. You said that yourself.”
I stared at her. Outside I could hear the thud of a heavy door and the sound of footsteps walking across the hall. The whole story, the one on which I’d based my entire life, was premised on a single factual error. And yet now that the real, living Gemma, with her mottled hands and plump bosom, was sitting before me, I realized that it made complete sense. Of course it was Coral and not Gemma who had died, for in retrospect the former was clearly hurtling toward lunatic self-destruction, while despite all her protestations of fragility, the latter was a rugged survivor.
“But there was a body . . .” I said slowly.
Gemma blinked, her cheeks suddenly red.
“I don’t know anything about any bodies.”
I gazed at her in silence, my mind slowly filling in the gaps. It was grotesque, an incident in a badly conceived black comedy, but we must have buried the wrong body. It hadn’t been Gemma who her family and friends had grimly lowered into the Stevenage soil but a messed-up drifter, an Australian girl who called herself Coral and whose family probably didn’t even know she was dead. For an absurd moment I almost laughed, a wave of hysteria rising up within me, like all those times in A-level English when Mrs. Crewe would say something and Gem’s and my eyes would meet and we’d splutter with badly repressed hilarity. And if it was Coral who had died, I suddenly thought, why had Gemma disappeared? Reaching out across the cold room, I touched her arm.
“What happened, Gem? Why didn’t you let us know you were okay?”
She glanced at me, her face composed once more. “You could cope. I just assumed you’d head off for Goa or somewhere and have a good time. You didn’t need me. You only asked me to come with you on your great trip because you felt guilty.”
I swallowed, the pressure in my chest tightening another notch. After all that I’d been through, how could she say such a thing?
“But you disappeared!” I croaked.
“So what?”
This was more than I could take. How dare she sit there like the Queen of the Hare Krishnas and pretend that she was blameless, her only crime not staying in touch? I let go of her arm, sitting up straight and glaring at her angrily.
“Didn’t you think that you disappearing might have an effect on me?” I said, my voice rising angrily. “And what about your family? For God’s sake, what about your mum?”
She looked quickly away.
“She never bothered about me before,” she said quietly. “So why should she now? And anyway, it doesn’t matter now. All that attachment stuff is irrelevant. What matters is the path ahead.”
I gazed at her, so shocked that for a moment I could not think of what to say. She was not going to get away with it, I suddenly thought. She might have changed almost beyond recognition, but she was still Gem, my oldest friend, on whose memory I’d based my entire life.
“What do you mean ‘it doesn’t matter’?” I cried, feeling the blood rush furiously to my cheeks. “You thought you’d just vanish, just like that?”
“Why not?”
I grabbed at her limp hand. When I squeezed it only the slightest pressure was returned.
“Why did you do this? Was it because of me and Steve?”
She laughed. “It’s completely irrelevant.”
“Then what was it?” I said hoarsely. I was nearly in tears now. I sniffed them back, determined to carry on. “Did I push you into it, or something? Please, Gem, I really need to know.”
Very slowly, she pulled her hand away.
“It wasn’t anything to do with you.”
“But I took Steve from you! And I left you there in Agun Mazir, with Coral so off her head . . .”
“No, you’re wrong.”
Tilting her chin upward, just as she had always done when she was feeling particularly obstinate, she stared into my face. “I made you do it,” she said. “It was what I wanted.”
