by Eric Brown
Sally recalled Kath’s smile on the sunny London day nine years ago, and all of a sudden she felt very alone. She wanted to go back to the house and have Geoff hold her, comfort her.
She left the beer garden. Instead of going by the road, which would have been the quickest route, she took the canal path behind the pub and cut across the fields on the edge of town. As she walked, she was aware of a sudden brightening in the air above her head, and looked up.
An energy pulse lit the heavens, dazzling. She looked away as the entire sky brightened and the pulse fell towards the energy distribution station to the south. A few crumbs… She laughed to herself, then wept.
She approached the house through the gate in the back garden, then stopped and stared across the lawn. The house was a rambling Victorian rectory, cloaked in wisteria, a little shabby but in a comfortable, homely way. The garden was typical ‘English cottage’, loaded with abundant borders and strategically placed fruit trees, pear, apple and cherry. At the far end of the lawn Hannah played on a swing, pushed by Tamsin, her child-minder. Sally leaned against the yew tree beside the gate and watched for a minute, preparing herself like an actor about to step on to the stage.
She fixed a smile in place and breezed into the garden. Hannah saw her, launched herself from the swing, and ran across the lawn. Sally picked her up and smiled at Tamsin.
The young woman stared at her. “Sal,” she murmured. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Sally lowered Hannah to the grass and she ran off. “I… I’ve just heard that a good friend has died.” She could not, for some reason, tell Tamsin that she had witnessed the accident. “It… it’s a hell of a shock.”
“I’ll stay, Sal. I’ll put Hannah to bed. It’s fine, I’ve got nothing on tonight.”
“No you won’t, Tamsin. But thanks anyway. I’ll be okay, honestly. Get your bag and go home.”
“Hannah’s eaten.” Tamsin looked at her, concerned. “Look, it would be no trouble for me to stay.”
Tamsin took some persuading, but Sally was adamant. She wanted to be alone with Hannah tonight, read her a story before bedtime. Geoff might be away, but normality would be achieved with the daily routine of putting her daughter to bed.
When Tamsin had reluctantly departed, Sally started the familiar bedtime process. Pyjamas, brushed teeth and washed face, toilet and snuggle down in bed. She asked Hannah about her day at school, an enquiry which as usual was stonewalled with a child’s innate reluctance to vouchsafe any information she regarded as solely her own.
She read a few pages of Hannah’s current school-book, kissed her and said goodnight, feeling guilty for the perfunctory performance as she turned off the light and left the room.
She stood in the middle of the lounge, crammed with bookcases, old chairs and sofas, the walls hung with pictures and prints. Kath had never seen the house, and Sally would have enjoyed giving her a guided tour. On top of one bookcase was an old photo of Sally and Kath in their college days, picnicking beside the Thames. Sally picked it up and stared at the twenty-two year-old Kath laughing at something she, Sally, had said or done.
She ran to her study, activated her softscreen and tapped in Geoff’s code. The time here was eight, which meant that it would be five in the morning in Japan — but would Geoff have finished his work for the Serene yet? Even though Geoff had told her what time he was due to complete what he called his ‘shift,’ for the life of her she could not remember what he’d said.
The screen remained blank and a neutral female voice said, “Geoff Allen is unable to take your call at the moment. If you would like to leave a message after the tone…”
She held back a sob and said, “Geoff. Something awful… Hannah’s fine and so am I. It’s Kath. There was an accident. I saw it.” She wept, despite her best intentions not to. “Oh, Geoff, it was awful, awful… Please ring me back as soon as you can. I love you.”
She cut the connection and sat staring at the blank screen.
She emailed her manager at the practice, told him that she wouldn’t be in tomorrow due to the sudden death of a very close friend, then moved to the kitchen and made herself a big pot of green tea. She thought about eating and vetoed the idea. Food, at the moment, was the last thing she wanted.
She curled up in her chair by the picture window, as the sun lowered itself towards the hazy Shropshire hills, and sipped the tea. Somehow the picture of herself and Kath was in her lap, though she had no recollection of carrying it into the study.
A thought flashed across her mind and would not go away. What a stupid, stupid death… A death that someone like Kath did not deserve. She was exactly Sally’s age, fifty-three, far too young to die when she had so much life ahead of her, so much important work to do, so much to see… She thought of Mars, and how wonderful it would have been to walk together across the meadows — or whatever! — in the shadow of Olympus Mons.
Always assuming, of course, she and Geoff had agreed to the move.
And what of the job offer now? Should she relocate to the red planet, leave behind all that was familiar, merely because the Serene had suggested it? Without Kath there to shepherd her through, it seemed unlikely.
Lord, but she missed Geoff on his days away. It was only for two or three days a month, but it always seemed much longer to her. In between his work for the Serene, he worked from home editing the photos taken on his previous trip, and was away for two days or so on commissions for the agency, which somehow never seemed as long as his Serene work.
They had discussed this, and wondered if it was something to do with the fact that there was an unknown element about the Serene commissions. For half of the time he was away he was unconscious, his body a puppet of the Serene, to do with as they wished. Perhaps, she thought, it wouldn’t be so bad if she knew exactly what kind of work he was doing.
She finished her tea and made her way to the bedroom in the eaves of the house.
She lay awake for a couple of hours, her head full of Kath — flashing alternative images of her friend in her college days, and the smile she had given Sally across the top of the car as she’d quoted Housman just seconds before…
She slept badly and awoke, with a start, at seven when Hannah — a ball of oblivious energy — sprinted into the bedroom and launched herself onto the bed.
They had breakfast together and Tamsin arrived at eight-thirty to tidy up and take Hannah to school. Sally told Tamsin to take the day off — normally on Thursdays she came back and did the cleaning and washing, but today Sally wanted to lose herself in the routine of housework.
“If you’re sure…”
“I’m not going into work, Tamsin. I need to fill the time with something.”
At ten to nine she accompanied Hannah and Tamsin outside and waved them off as Tamsin pulled her electric car from the drive. She sighed, standing alone and hugging herself in the bright summer sunlight, then returned inside.
A strong coffee, housework…
An insistent pinging issued from her study, and her heart kicked. Geoff, getting back to her.
She hurried through the house and accepted the call.
The screen was briefly blank, then flared. The image showed a woman in her early fifties, smiling out at her apprehensively.
Kath…
Sally sat back in her chair as if something had slammed into her chest.
Then she knew what had happened. Kath had called the previous afternoon, and the message had been delayed.
“Sally, I know this will be something of a shock.”
Blood thundered through her head, slowing her thinking.
“Sally, it’s me, Kath. I’m sorry for doing this. Perhaps I should have come round to the house in person, in the flesh…”
Her voice croaked, “Kath?”
Her friend’s expression was filled with compassion, understanding. She said, “Sally, what happened yesterday… I’d like to come around, see you and explain.”
Sally managed to say, �
�But you were dead. I saw it happen. I saw it… You were dead!”
“I’ll be around to see you in a few minutes, Sally.” Kath smiled one last time and cut the connection.
Sally sat very still, hugged herself and repeated incredulously, “But you were dead…”
CHAPTER TWO
AS THE TRAIN pulled into Howrah station, Ana Devi had no sense at all of coming home.
She had assumed, on the long journey north across the Deccan plain, that she would feel a certain identification with the place where, from the age of six to sixteen, she had spent all her life. She had a store of memories both good and bad — with the good, oddly enough, outweighing the bad. She supposed that that was because she had not been alone here, a street kid scraping a living on an inimical city station, but had been surrounded by a makeshift family which had shared her experiences. She had transplanted her family to central India, and the fact that they had taken on good jobs and prospered meant that, despite their harsh upbringing, they had prevailed.
The station was a strange mixture of the old and the new. Much of it she recognised with a throbbing jolt of nostalgia, and then her recollections would be confused by the position of a new poly-carbon building or footbridge. As the train slid into the station, they passed the goods yard and the rickety van where she and twenty other kids had slept at night. The yard was surrounded by containers and new buildings, and she hardly recognised the place. The train eased to a halt on the platform, and Ana smiled as she stared across at the Station Master’s office. She wondered if Mr Jangar still ruled Howrah with a rod of iron.
She stepped from the train and allowed the crowds to drain away around her until the platform was almost deserted. She glanced up at the footbridge, where she had spent many an hour as a child watching the trains come and go, and caught a fleeting glimpse of a darting figure up there on the criss-crossed girders. She caught her breath, at once dismayed that children still haunted the station and alarmed at this individual’s daring. The girder was almost twenty metres high, and one wrong step would send the kid tumbling to the tracks below. Then the figure halted suddenly, squatted and stared down at her — and Ana laughed aloud. It was not a street kid but a slim grey monkey.
She looked around the platform, seeking out the nooks and crannies where, ten years ago, she would have seen evidence of the street kids — or the ‘station rats’ as Mr Jangar had called them — but only commuters occupied the platform, awaiting their trains. Of course, she told herself, street kids were a thing of the past, now. Her generation had been the very last.
She pulled the silver envelope from the side pocket of her holdall and crossed to the station master’s office.
A secretary sat before a softscreen. He looked up enquiringly as Ana entered.
“I am looking for the station master, Mr Jangar,” she said. “I have an appointment with him at three o’clock.”
The young man referred to his screen and nodded. “Ana Devi?” He indicated a door to Ana’s right. “Mr Jangar will see you straight away.”
She hurried through the door and found herself in a small waiting room. She approached a door bearing the nameplate “Station Master Daljit Jangar,” and knocked.
A deep voice rumbled, “Come in.”
Ana pushed open the door, suddenly a child again, her heart thudding at the thought of meeting the feared Jangar after all these years.
She stepped into the room and he rose to meet her, the very same barrel-bellied, walrus-moustachioed, turbaned Sikh she recalled from her childhood, only a little fatter now, a little slower.
They shook hands and he indicated a seat, then sat down behind his impressively vast desk and stared at her. “Now what can I do for you, Miss…?”
“I am Ana Devi,” she said, “and I am the senior food production manager at the Andhra Pradesh wilderness city.”
He nodded, peering at her closely. “If you don’t mind my saying, Miss Devi, your face is very familiar.”
She smiled. “And so it should be, Mr Jangar. You made the lives of myself and my friends a constant misery.”
He shook his head in confusion. “I don’t quite understand…”
“As a child I lived here on the station. I begged and stole, played on the girders beneath the footbridge, slept in the van in the goods yard.”
“Ah, a station rat. You were a nuisance, I will say that much. The trouble I got from the police superintendent to clear the station of kids.” He chuckled, as if reflecting on good times.
Ana said, “We had nowhere else to live, Mr Jangar. Oh, sometimes we slept in the park, but it was a dangerous place. At least here there was food to be had, and shelter, and crowds to hide among.”
She glanced across the room to the stick propped in the corner, Mr Jangar’s dreaded lathi. She remembered one occasion, when she was seven or eight, and a ticket collector had caught her stealing biscuits from the station canteen and dragged her kicking and screaming to Jangar’s office. She had half a mind to remind him of the beating he had dealt her then, but restrained herself.
“You no longer have occasion to use your lathi?” she asked.
“Oh, I threaten dilatory workers with it from time to time, Miss Devi, but gone are the days when…”
She said, “Thanks to the Serene.”
He stared at her. “There was something to be said for a little constructive punishment, in the right place.”
Ah, she thought, so that’s what it was, that beating and others that had left her black and blue and unable to walk properly for a week: constructive punishment. Would it have pained her any less, she thought, to have known that as a tiny seven-year-old?
Jangar cleared his throat. “But I take it that you did not come here merely to reminisce, Miss Devi.”
She smiled. Part of her motive for delivering the letter — which might as easily have been sent by email — was to visit the station again and impress upon Jangar how she had overcome her lowly origins.
She slid the silver envelope across the desk and watched him slit it open and read the letter.
He harrumphed. “From the wilderness city director himself,” he muttered.
“And as the letter states, he is not impressed by the continual lateness of the Kolkata trains, Mr Jangar. We depend upon punctuality in order to maximise the distribution of our produce, as I’m sure you understand.”
“Quite, quite…”
“This could have been sent by email, Mr Jangar, but Director Chandra wanted me to stress the importance of the matter, and to say this: if things do not improve, Mr Jangar, then the matter will be presented to the city council.”
Jangar looked up, but could not bring himself to look her in the eye. “I will have my transport manager look into the matter forthwith, Miss Devi.”
“Excellent.” Ana stood, reached out and shook Jangar’s hand. “It has been a pleasure to talk of old times,” she said, and swept from the office as if walking on air.
One demon from her past confronted and exorcised, she thought.
She booked into a new hotel complex across the road from the station, showered and rested on the bed for an hour before leaving the hotel and strolling through the busy streets.
Everything changed, she had once read somewhere, but India changed more gradually than anywhere else. She saw prosperity on the streets, where ten years ago she had seen poverty — families living in the gutters, maimed beggars on street corners, kids trapping rats and birds in order to provide their only meal in days…
Now she saw well dressed citizens promenading, and stalls selling fruit and vegetables — she felt a sense of pride in this — and new poly-carbon structures nestling alongside ancient temples and scabbed buildings. Tradesmen still plied their crafts beside the roads: cobblers and shoe-shiners alongside hawkers selling freshly-pressed fruit- and sugar-cane juice. But gone was the grinding poverty that had once given the streets an air of hopeless desperation.
She made her way to Station Road and stood outsi
de Bhatnagar’s restaurant where, as a girl, she had pressed her nose against the window and stared at the ziggurats of gulab jamans, the slabs of kulfi and dripping piles of idli, and beyond them to the fat, wealthy diners filling their faces with food that Ana had only dreamed of eating.
Now she stepped through the sliding door — metaphorically taking the hand of the timid girl she had been — and was met by a liveried flunky who bowed and showed her to a table beside the window.
She ordered a vegetable pakora starter followed by a dal mushroom masala, then finished off with barfi and a small coffee. She glanced through the window, half expecting to see hungry faces pressed to the glass; but the children she did see out there were clutching the hands of their parents and did not spare a glance at the diners beyond the wondrous piles of sweetmeats.
As she was about to leave, Ana caught the eye of an old waiter and said, “Do you know if a gentleman by the name of Sanjeev Varnaputtram still orders food from this restaurant?”
The old man appeared surprised by the enquiry. “Varnaputtram has fallen on hard times. No longer can he afford to dine on food from Bhatnagar’s.”
“So he’s still alive?”
“So I have heard, but he is old and very ill these days.”
“And do you happen to know where I might find him?”
The man laughed, showing an incomplete set of yellowed teeth. “Where he is always to be found. His house on Ganesh Chowk. He is so fat, Miss, that no one can move him!”
Smiling, Ana tipped the waiter, settled her bill and left the restaurant.
She made her way back towards the station, then turned from the main street and paced down the narrow alleyways to the house where Varnaputtram still lived.
She had tried to look ahead and guess what her feelings might be when she made this journey back into her past, and this specific walk down Ganesh Chowk to confront the monster who was Sanjeev Varnaputtram. She had assumed she would feel fear — a vestige of the dread from all those years ago — and also apprehension, but the surprising truth was that she felt none of these things: what she did feel was anger.
