Aileen Izett

He had taken the bungalow because it was almost on the beach. He had liked the impermanence of it: a lone, shanty-like structure of three rooms, kitchen and bathroom facing the Bay of Bengal. His new employers when they had found out where he had decided to live, had been anxious that the place was too remote – but he had said no, it was just what he needed. He hadn’t elaborated and they hadn’t asked any further, although he was under no illusion that they must have made discreet enquiries back in England as to why he was available to take on the job at such short notice. Despite a hiatus of two years, his references were excellent.

As soon as he heard the car lurching down the rutted track, he panicked. Stand up or remain sitting down? What would look more relaxed? Then he told himself that the old Nigel would stroll down the veranda steps and be there, with a cheery smile on his face, waiting for the car to pitch into view. Only, the old Nigel would never have been in India. The old Nigel would have been back in the UK, a man totally at ease with his life.

The car had barely stopped moving before she hurtled out.

‘Dad!’ Her thin arms steadied him, clasping him tightly. She leant her face against his chest. He dropped a kiss on the mop of blonde hair which smelt decidedly whiffy. In fact, the entirety of her smelt like ripe papaya. He liked it. She pulled away from him with a tinkling sound and smiled. He smiled back – a genuine smile of joy at seeing her again. With his thumb he carefully blotted a tear from her cheek. A young man in shorts with a kerchief round his neck was occupying himself by heaving the rucksacks out of the boot of the car.

‘Tom!’ Sophie called over to him. ‘Meet my Dad.’

‘Please call me Nigel,’ Nigel said, giving Tom a friendly slap on the back. Tom was tall. He draped himself around Sophie’s shoulders like a flag.

 

Krishnan reversed the Mercedes round to the back of the bungalow. There was a lean-to there where he would park the car for the night. Beyond the lean-to, jungle life chattered and squawked, cat-called and whistled – a roiling sea of sound bubbling up for the night.

It was Tom who commented on the view from the veranda. Framed by the coconut palms which fringed the beach, the sun was going down, slipping behind a line of iridescent sea.

‘Dad,’ Sophie murmured, hand-in-hand with Tom, ‘you never said how beautiful this place is.’

She pulled the rattan sofa round, the pretty clinking sound coming from the glass bangles sliding over her wrists. She wore, Nigel noticed, four silver rings on three grubby toes.

Nigel uncapped the beers.

‘Ugh’ Sophie grimaced, as she took a sip. ‘I can’t believe I ever liked this stuff.’

Tom shifted so that he could stretch his arm and pull her closer to him. ‘That’s funny. You’ve drunk enough of it.’

Jutting out her chin, Sophie gave her boyfriend a pert look.‘I’ll remind you that I haven’t drunk alcohol, in fact have hardly eaten for the last ten days.’

‘Are you sure that you’re well enough to travel tomorrow?’ Nigel asked.

‘I’m looking forward to getting back home’, she said meaningfully.

‘Good girl,’ he said, telling her that he understood the message.

Sophie and Tom were supposed to have spent a week with Nigel but Sophie had been ill at the previous place. She had puked her guts out for ten days, so in the event, they would only be staying the one night. Their plane tickets were non-transferable, non-negotiable and Sophie wouldn’t hear of Nigel buying them new tickets for a later date. ‘Anyway, I’ll be back,’ she had promised her father weakly from her sick bed. ‘For February 5th.’ ‘Sweetie,’ he had said, ‘you mustn’t worry about me. Goodness knows if I’ll be still here next year. Besides, you must get on with your own life.’

She had got on with her own life. When he had told her that he was taking a job out in India, she had told him that she couldn’t face going back to university. She wanted to travel around the sub-continent and when he had warned her that he would be very busy and wouldn’t have much time, she’d told him quite firmly that she would come and see him at the end of her trip. She had met Tom in Jaipur. ‘You’ll like him,’ she’d said breezily, during one of their intermittent phone calls. ‘He’s like me.’ ‘How like?’ Nigel had wanted to ask. ‘Is he brave, inquisitive and absolutely bereft?’

 

It was getting dark. The beach gleamed white. The moon was in the ascendant. Nigel got up and switched on the overhead light which buzzed and flickered and coalesced into a yellow pool which didn’t quite reach the sofa and chairs. Sophie leant her head against Tom’s shoulder. He leant his head on hers. From the kitchen came the smell of sizzling spices and of meat being basted: Krishnan, cooking up a curry for them. Nigel sat back down again. He had been dreading seeing his only child again, of being reminded of what he – they – had both lost, but it was only with an occasional gesture of Sophie’s that the memory of her mother flooded through him, barely obstructed by the stone in his heart.

‘What is it Dad?’ Sophie asked, discomforted by the intensity of her father’s expression. ‘You don’t think I’m too thin do you?’ She stood up abruptly, and did a self-mocking little pirouette, knocking a beer bottle off the low table. Laughing, Tom stretched to retrieve it before it rolled under Nigel’s chair.

‘No,’ Nigel said, shaking his head. ‘You’re not - well, okay, maybe a little.’

Because of Tom – on account of Tom – the conversation over supper remained firmly in India. Tom touched on Sophie’s recent sickness.

‘It can’t have been Delhi belly,’ Nigel said. ‘Not after six months.’

Sophie giggled, giving Tom a glance. ‘It must have been something I ate.’

‘Yeah,’ Tom grinned. ‘And then some.’

Playfully, Sophie wagged a finger. ‘Clever clogs. Just because you didn’t.’

Nigel marvelled at their easy intimacy. ‘She’s going to be okay,’ he thought. ‘She’ll manage. She’s looking to the future.’ He wished that he could. That he didn’t feel so dislocated from the day-to-day that sometimes he didn’t feel real at all.

‘You haven’t told me what happened,’ Nigel said.

Sophie dabbed at the few grains of rice scattered by her plate. ‘You’re going to think I’m mad.’

Nigel raised his eyes heavenwards. Tom muffled a laugh.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘we went up this holy mountain to greet the sunrise … you know, getting up at four, climbing in the dark …

‘It was spectacular,’ Tom said. ‘Really worth it.’

‘Then,’ Sophie said in a rush, ‘we were offered some cake which I ate and Tom didn’t.’

‘Those that did,’ Tom said, ‘were violently ill a couple of hours later. I don’t know how you could have, Soph, the smell alone .. ‘

‘You can’t be sure,’ Sophie countered.

Tom snorted.

‘But at least I experienced the whole thing. I gave of myself whole-heartedly. You understand, don’t you?’ She appealed to Nigel.

‘Of course I do,’ Nigel said. He took a deep breath and said: ‘Your mother would have done exactly the same.’

 

Later he lay on his bed and put his pillow over his head so that he didn’t have to hear squeaking of the bed springs next door.

 

In the morning, Tom said that he would re-pack the rucksacks while Sophie and Nigel had a walk on the beach.

‘Come,’ Sophie cajoled, catching her boyfriend around the waist.

‘I’m good,’ Tom said. ‘You two go for it.’

It was still early enough for the sand to be cool. Distant sounds of tapping and banging and the occasional roar of heavy machinery broke the peace. It was Nigel’s work – a major construction project for a multi-national hotel chain in the next bay – ten miles by road and a couple of miles along the shoreline.

They stopped to watch three men heave a lone fishing boat into the water.

‘I worry about you,’ she said, shading her eyes from the glitter on the sea.

‘Don’t.’

‘I thought I’d find some sort of answer, coming over to India.’

‘To what? Life, nature and the universe?’ He kept his tone light. ‘It’s a common mistake.’

She giggled, lifting her hand as if to brush away tears. ‘You do like Tom don’t you?’

‘Very much.’

‘It’s early days yet.’

With lots of shouting the boat finally floated. They walked on, the sea ruffling over their feet.

‘People die,’ she said. ‘God knows, people die.’

‘But not Clodagh. Not at forty-two.’ He battened it down, the rage and anguish which kept him alive and made him feel half-dead most of the time.

‘Your mother did,’ was all he said.

 

He took them to the station. Krishnan drove. Nigel sat beside him, admiring as always the skill with which Krishnan managed to weave the car’s bulk past pedestrians, cycles, motor-cycles, lorries and the occasional holy cow.

Tom disappeared into the throng on the platform, saying that he needed a slash.

Sophie clung to Nigel. ‘I’m dreading going back.’

‘But yesterday you said …’ Gently, he disengaged himself.

‘The house,’ she said, ‘I don’t know if I’ll be able to bear seeing all Mum’s things just as if ….’ She looked very alone, standing in a space that was all her own.

‘I’ll ask Auntie Maura to go round before you get back.’

‘I miss her so much.’

‘We both do darling, but hey …’

‘I love you.’

‘Chin up,’ he said.

Tom waved and Sophie blew a kiss and then the train was off, leaving in its wake a deserted platform except for one peanut seller who, with great good humour, tried to attract Nigel’s attention to his wares.

Nigel felt ebullient as he slipped onto the back seat. Krishnan turned the engine.

‘Let’s go for a drive,’ Nigel said. ‘Not back to the bungalow. Not yet. Let’s go up the mountains.’

Krishnan turned his head. ‘But the rains Mr Simpson, look.’

Nigel looked. Grey clouds were massing on the edge of the sky but the light was still bright. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘I’ll make it worth your while.’

‘And the office?’

‘I’ll phone them,’ Nigel took his mobile out. ‘Look,’ he said, punching in the work number. His sense of happiness was replaced by the dull ache of loss.

 

They were on a tight thin ribbon of mountain road when the rains came, battering the car, enveloping it like a widow’s veil. On one side, craggy rock; on the other, a precipitous drop. Krishnan was hunched over the steering wheel. Nigel was sat in the back, cold in his sweat. The headlights were no match for the rain’s density; the windscreen wipers faltering under its weight. Occasionally, a car would loom up in front of them and Krishnan would pull over with Nigel leaning inwards away from the edge. Then they saw headlights tunnelling towards them and behind the lights, a shape much larger than a car. Krishnan muttered a prayer. Nigel shut his eyes. He knew then that he didn’t want to be with Clodagh, not quite yet. There was a scraping and a grinding and a feeling that the car was being pulled backwards until something snapped. The car surged forwards, with Krishnan whooping with relief. Nigel opened his eyes. The lorry had gone past, taking the driver-side mirror with it as it went.

He didn’t mean to, but he looked down into the valley. A single shaft of light had broken through the clouds. Spotlighted in the light, bathed in the light, was an elephant, in a jungle clearing on the valley floor. It was standing quite still, with one foot poised, its trunk raised in salutation. In that moment, the stone that had weighed down his heart lifted. That was how Nigel would explain it, to Sophie, days later. Suddenly he was reconnected with the world and with himself. He felt his past, his present and his future – all three were part of a whole – but of what he didn’t know. He didn’t have to know. Just to be, that was enough.

THE END