The Road Back

by Liz Harris

  Posters and maps of Ladakh covered every inch of the walls; books of every shape and size, all of them about Ladakh, were piled up high on the bookshelves; photographs taken from books, from a computer, by a camera, stood on every shelf.

  She stopped in the centre of the room and turned to face Patricia, questioningly.

  ‘It’s my Ladakh,’ Patricia said quietly. ‘I so wanted to be there with Kalden. And look, Amy.’ She went over to the table next to the armchair by the window and picked up the silver-framed photograph that stood next to an album. ‘This is your father. This is Kalden.’

  Amy went to Patricia, took the photo from her and stared at it.

  Then she raised her eyes and looked around the room again. ‘This place is like a shrine.’

  Patricia followed her gaze. ‘Yes, I suppose it is in a way.’

  Amy’s forehead wrinkled. ‘You’ve made a room in your house into a shrine for someone who died years ago.’

  ‘I can see that it must seem somewhat strange to you, but when I’m in here, I feel as if Kalden knows that I love him. More than that – I feel as if he’s still alive and with me.’

  Amy put the photo back down on the table.

  She straightened up, and looked into Patricia’s face. ‘But you already had a shrine to Kalden: you had me,’ she said, her voice rising. ‘What was I but a shrine – a real, living shrine with Kalden’s blood in my veins? Not something you had to build out of photographs and books. A part of Kalden was still alive and could have been with you, but you gave that part away. Like it was nothing. If you’d kept me with you, brought me up and loved me, you would have really shown Kalden how much you loved him. Wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Not like it was nothing. You were never nothing. I loved you – I wanted to keep you. I …’

  ‘Gave me away, that’s what you did. Abandoned me. What kind of love is that?’

  ‘I told you I couldn’t keep you. I really couldn’t. On my own, unmarried with a baby, no job, next to no money, it would have been impossible. In those days …’

  ‘In those days, you say! Well, let me tell you about those days. In those days, mixed race children were looked down upon – in the classroom, in the playground, in the shops, in the street. Did you think it would be easy for me in those days, Patricia? Did you? Or were you too busy thinking about you, and how hard it would be for you?’

  Patricia stared at her, her face grey.

  ‘Everywhere we went, my parents and I, people took one look at me and knew I was adopted. Mum and Dad did their best to protect me from the names people called me, the looks I got, but it was your job to do that. I was your daughter.’

  ‘Oh, Amy …’

  ‘If you’d stopped thinking about yourself for one moment and thought about me, you would have seen how difficult it was going to be for me. That I’d have a harder time than English kids who were adopted, even with the most wonderful parents in the world, which I had.’ Tears streaming down her cheeks, she stepped back from Patricia. ‘You selfishly turned your back on your baby. You should have kept me, no matter how hard it was going to be. That’s how you would have shown Kalden that you truly loved him.’

  ‘Amy,’ Patricia whispered. ‘Oh, Amy, I’m so sorry.’

  ‘I won’t have another cup of tea, thank you. I’m going home.’

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Almost two weeks later, Patricia stood a little way down the leaf-strewn road in which Amy lived, a carrier bag in her hand, waiting for Andrew to leave the house. When he’d finally driven off, she took a deep breath, went up the drive to the front door and rang the bell.

  The door opened. Amy stared at Patricia in surprise. ‘I didn’t expect to see you again.’

  ‘I know that. But there are still some things to be said.’

  ‘I rather thought we’d rather said it all.’

  ‘Please, Amy. I promise I won’t take up much of your time.’

  Amy gave a slight shrug and stood back to let Patricia enter the hall. She closed the door behind her and led the way into the sitting room. ‘You can have a coffee if you want.’

  ‘No, thanks. I don’t want anything.’ She sat down and leaned her bag against her foot.

  ‘I think you do,’ Amy said, sitting opposite her. ‘You obviously want to defend yourself.’

  ‘Defend myself? Well, that’s one way of looking at it, I suppose. Make a better job of explaining myself is how I’d prefer to describe it.’

  ‘It doesn’t really matter what words we use, does it? We each know how we see it, and that’s what matters.’

  ‘I deserve everything you said two weeks ago, Amy. I completely failed you and I failed Kalden. I accept that.’

  ‘Well, that’s something we can agree upon.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking a lot about why I didn’t fight hard enough to keep you, and I’ve decided that while my father deserves much of the blame, I’m not sure that it was his fault alone. Deep down, I’ve always felt responsible for Kalden falling, and I wonder if part of the reason why I agreed to the adoption was that I didn’t think I deserved to be happy: I had to be punished for Kalden’s death.’

  ‘And what about me and my happiness? Again, it’s about what you deserved, and not what I deserved. No matter how happy you are with the parents who’ve chosen you, there’s always something that doesn’t feel quite right. Especially when you look as different from your parents as I did.’

  ‘I realise that now. I’m just trying to help us both understand why I gave you away, and I’m saying that I don’t think it’s down to one thing only. It’s a combination of things: the nature of my father, the fact that I felt guilty about Kalden dying, my character. There’s probably more of my mother in me than I realised. She never stood up for me against my father, but how much of that was due to James, and how much to flaws in her character, I don’t know. I may have the same flaws.’

  ‘Who on earth is James?’

  Patricia bent down, opened her bag and took out several photographs. She spread them out on the table, and pointed to one. ‘That’s my brother, James. Your uncle, or he would have been. He died when he was seventeen. If he hadn’t been injured in the war, there’d be no you. James would have gone to Ladakh with my father, not me. His illness dominated the lives of all three of us. Looking back as an adult, I’m sure that my mother always felt guilty about what happened to him, even though it wasn’t her fault at all.’

  Amy picked up one of the photographs. ‘Is this your father?’

  ‘Yes. I brought one of him in uniform as he was a military man through and through. And this is my mother, Enid.’

  Amy glanced down at the photos, then looked curiously at Patricia.

  ‘So what happened to James that made your mother feel so guilty?’

  Patricia picked up the picture of her brother. Looking at his face, she began to tell Amy his story.

  ‘You’re sure the coffee’s all right? I remember you saying you didn’t really like coffee.’

  ‘It’s perfect. Thank you.’

  Amy sat back in her chair. ‘I’m not saying that what happened to James all those years ago makes what you did all right. It doesn’t. You could have moved on. Lots of people suffered losses in the war and got over it. But I sort of understand you better.’

  ‘I’m glad about that. I so want us to be friends. And apart from telling you about my family, there are things I can tell you about Kalden that you might find interesting. For example, he’d have been a monk if we hadn’t met.’

  ‘A monk!’

  ‘That’s right. He was going to join the monastery outside his village. But I think we’ll leave his story for another day. If you’re willing to meet up again, that is.’

  ‘That’s a cliffhanger, if ever I heard one. A monk, indeed. Just wait till I tell Andrew.’

  ‘Anyway, so far all we’ve talked about is me. I want to learn about you.’ Patricia paused. ‘When we first met, you said that you’d lost your baby earlier this year
.’

  ‘That’s right. I was three months pregnant when I lost him. Andrew and I miss him so much, even though we didn’t get to meet him.’

  ‘It must have been an awful time for you.’

  ‘It was. I missed having Mum around – and Dad was ill at the time, which made it even harder.’

  ‘You must have felt as if your life had turned upside down.’

  ‘You’re absolutely right, I did. And to be honest, I still do. But I don’t want to talk about it – I get too upset when I do.’

  Patricia glanced at her watch. ‘Well, I think I’d better get off now – I wouldn’t want to outstay my welcome.’ She leaned slightly forward. ‘I’m not going to ask you to forgive me for what I did – no one could forgive that – but I really would like to be your friend, if you’d let me.’

  ‘I suppose we’ll have to meet up again,’ Amy said. ‘I’ve got to hear about Kalden and the monk side of things, haven’t I?’

  Patricia’s face broke into a smile. ‘Indeed, you have. What about coffee next Saturday?’

  ‘So that’s Kalden’s story,’ Amy said, playing with her empty muffin wrapper. ‘When you live somewhere like England, you never think about what it must be like to live where there’s virtually no rain.’

  ‘No one would.’ Patricia leaned down and picked up the paper bag resting against the table leg. She put the bag on her lap and took out an album. ‘Here, I’ve brought you the book my father compiled. It’ll give you a better idea of how the Ladakhi live than I can give you. It’s got lots of photos of villages just like Kalden’s and it’ll give you some idea of the surrounding area. Take it home with you – Andrew might be interested in it, too.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Amy took it and put it on the side of the table. She opened the cover and glanced inside. ‘Are there any photos of Kalden?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. Father destroyed them all. However …’ She pulled a slim package wrapped in brown paper from the bag and handed it to Amy. ‘I was able to have a copy made because I still had the original negative.’

  Amy tore the paper away and stared at the framed photograph of Kalden, a replica of the photo next to Patricia’s armchair.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. She ran her hand lightly over the glass that protected Kalden’s face. ‘Thank you. That was very nice of you, very thoughtful.’ She placed the photograph carefully on top of the album. ‘Have you been back to Ladakh since I was born? You obviously love the country.’

  ‘No, I haven’t. I couldn’t bear to go there alone, without Kalden. He’s so much a part of the place for me. So, no. I’ve contented myself with sitting in my room – in my shrine, as you put it – and imagining that I’m in Ladakh.’

  Amy picked up Kalden’s photograph and looked at it again. Still holding the photo, she flicked through the pages of the album. Patricia sat quietly, waiting.

  ‘I wasn’t sure until this minute that I was going to say this,’ Amy said at last. ‘But I’d like to go to Ladakh, and I’d like you to come with me.’

  Patricia shook her head. ‘I can’t.’ She clasped her hands together in her lap.

  ‘It’s Andrew’s idea. He said that you and I should go there together, and that he’ll give us the tickets as a reunion present. I told him I didn’t want to go with you, but that I might go with him next year. But it’s suddenly hit me that I do want to go with you. Who better to show me Kalden’s village?’ She leaned across the table, and looked directly into Patricia’s face. ‘So, let’s go to Ladakh together, Patricia. Please.’

  ‘I don’t know what to say. I need to think about it. It’s where Kalden died. I never expected to go there again. Sometimes it’s better not to go back.’

  ‘But you’ve never really left Ladakh, have you, so you wouldn’t actually be going back, would you?’

  ‘Well, that’s true. But I’m not sure. No, I don’t think I can.’

  ‘It’s been a really sad year for me – first I lost my baby, then I lost my dad, and in a way, I lost my birth father, too. On the plus side, we’ve met and I’ve found out about my heritage. Now that I have, I want to see it first hand. I want to see the post house where you and your father stayed, and I want to see the mountains that Kalden loved. I want to visit the house where he lived – his family might still there be there, and his brothers are my uncles. That’s what I want. And I don’t want to go there alone, nor with Andrew – I want to go there with you.’

  Patricia bit her lower lip. ‘I need to think about it.’

  ‘Well, don’t think about it for too long,’ Amy said, straightening up. ‘Andrew’s checked the flights, and we can go next week.’

  ‘Next week! I couldn’t. And it’s too expensive, anyway.’

  ‘As I said, it’s Andrew’s treat. He’s an architect and a very good one at that. We don’t have any children to spend our money on – at least, not yet, we don’t. Andrew knows me better than I know myself, and he knows how much I need to go. Apparently, we can fly to Delhi at the end of next week and pick up a chartered flight to Leh. I thought we could stay in Ladakh for a couple of weeks.’

  ‘Next week sounds very close. You don’t think it’s too soon?’

  ‘We need to get there and back before snow closes the airport. And I want to go this year, not next. I might have a baby next year, and if I did, it wouldn’t be so easy to take off just like that. The more I think about it, the more I want to see where half of me comes from. Silly as it sounds, I feel as if I’ll be going home.’ Her voice caught in her throat. ‘So, are we going to get on that plane next week? Will you do the only thing for me I’ve ever asked of you?’

  A strange sensation stirring within her, Patricia slowly nodded.

  At the same moment, both glanced down at the photo that lay on top of the album.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Ladakh, September 1995

  As they left Delhi further and further behind, their conversation died away. Amy moved closer to Patricia, who had a window seat on the crowded plane taking them from Dehli to Leh, and they both stared out of the window towards the ground.

  ‘I can’t wait to get my first glimpse of Ladakh,’ Amy said. ‘If we ever see it, that is – there are so many clouds you can’t see the ground.’

  ‘They must have heard you – they’re breaking up. Look, you can see the mountains now.’

  Amy leaned across Patricia and gazed down at the snow-clad peaks of the Himalayas. ‘Wow, that’s a view worth waiting for!’

  Feeling the warmth of Amy’s body against hers, Patricia’s mind flew back to the first time she’d felt the heat of her baby in her arms. She sat very still, hardly daring to breathe, not wanting the moment to end.

  ‘I’m glad we didn’t leave it any later to come,’ Amy said, sitting back against her seat. ‘Some of the streams are already freezing over. They look like skinny little satin ribbons tied round the mountains.’ She glanced towards the window. ‘I wonder how you can tell when the bit of mountain under you is in Ladakh.’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’ Patricia smiled at her. ‘Of course, you might suddenly feel that you’re home. You did say that you felt as if you were going home.’

  Amy gave her a half smile. ‘I did, didn’t I? Well, we’ll see if that’s what happens.’

  Patricia turned back to the window.

  A little later, she caught sight of a stretch of clear ground between the mountains. ‘I’m afraid your inner signal wasn’t working, after all – that looks very much like a landing strip. And the airport’ll be the building next to it. We must have been flying over Ladakh for quite a while now.’

  Amy leaned in front of her again. ‘Isn’t it tiny? There doesn’t seem to be a lot of room to land. I’m glad I’m not the pilot. I’m not going to look out again until we’ve landed.’ She settled back, checked her seat belt and stared ahead of her.

  Patricia pressed her face against the window and gazed down at the concrete strip. The window misted up and she wiped it clear with her elbow. Th
irty-two years earlier, while she and Kalden had been on the road to Manali, her father had been down there at the airport, walking on the same bit of concrete that she was about to walk upon.

  Her heart gave a sudden lurch. It felt like yesterday.

  Their plane rose, circled one of the mountains, swooped down into the valley and approached the runway. Patricia grabbed Amy’s hand. The plane hit the ground and shuddered to a stop. Both let out an audible sigh of relief. Amy pulled her hand away. As soon as the seat belt light went off, she stood up to get down their overhead baggage.

  When they’d collected the rest of their luggage from the airport’s solitary baggage belt, they headed towards the exit to find a taxi to take them the few kilometres into the town. All of a sudden, Amy came to a halt in front of a large, hand-painted sign on the wall at the side of the exit.

  ‘So that’s why Andrew booked a couple of nights in Leh,’ she exclaimed, ‘although I’d wanted to get off to the village as soon as possible. It says here that you must wait at least thirty-six hours before going into the mountains.’

  ‘That’s because of altitude sickness. You have to get acclimatised before you go to the higher ground. It would be awful to spoil our trip by being ill. I’ve got some medicine for it, but it’d be better not to have to take it. When I came here with my father, we had the journey from Srinagar in which to get used to the altitude, but it’s different when you come by plane. And anyway, we ought to have a rest after such a long journey before we start travelling around.’

  ‘Whatever you say. From this point on, you’re the boss.’

  With the jagged peaks of the Himalayas dominating the horizon behind them, a stretch of stone-coloured desert on one side of them and farmland on the other, they trailed along the narrow streets and cobbled lanes of Leh, stopping every so often by the open stalls to look at the things for sale, and occasionally wandering into the shops selling curios and jewellery, where Amy darted among the silver, amber, coral and turquoise stones.