Losing Gemma

by Katy Gardner

  “Whatever. It’s crap to fall out.”

  Putting my arms around her shoulders I squeezed her tightly.

  “Friends again?”

  “Yeah, friends.”

  It felt odd, hugging someone so familiar who looked so radically different. We stepped apart, smiling and looking into each other’s eyes with slight embarrassment. During our embrace the flower behind her ear had been knocked askew. It was wilting, too, its stamen lilting drunkenly, the pollen sprinkled over her hair.

  “Your flower’s falling out.”

  Reaching up over her head, she pushed it back into place. Perhaps it was the argument, or her strange costume, but I felt unaccustomedly shy of her.

  “Anyway,” I said, sweeping the sensation aside. “I’ve got it all sorted out. I’ve booked us tickets for Orissa tomorrow morning.”

  There was another long pause. I sucked at my cheeks. I’d assumed she would be pleased.

  “You do still want to go?”

  “Yeah, sure . . .”

  “No cold feet?”

  “No. It’ll be fun.”

  “Then what’s the matter?”

  “I dunno . . .”

  “What is it? Tell me.”

  She glanced at me, slyly almost. “I suppose I was thinking that we should invite Coral to come with us,” she said slowly. “I mean, she’s a laugh, isn’t she? And she knows so much about everything, too. We could learn stuff from her.”

  I took a long, even breath.

  “Yeah, but we hardly know her, Gem,” I said slowly. “I mean, she seems really nice. But supposing she starts to get on our nerves?”

  “But it’s only for a few days. If that happens we can split.” She folded her arms defensively over her tummy which—I couldn’t stop myself from unkindly noting—bulged over the top of the sari.

  “The thing is . . .” I stared into Gemma’s shiny face, trying to choose the right words. The truth was that something about Coral made me uneasy. She pushed me out, that was what it was. For some reason she wanted to be friends with Gemma but not with me.

  “The thing is,” I said decisively, “I only managed to get the two tickets. I wanted to get one for Coral, too, but they were the last ones. And, anyway, I didn’t think she’d want to come.”

  “Why not?” Gemma stared at me stubbornly.

  I looked back at her, my face reddening. I’d told a blatant lie, and Gemma knew. “I don’t know.”

  Gemma stepped back in irritation, frowning and shaking her head. “Well, that’s great, isn’t it, Esther? Once again, you get to make all the decisions.”

  “It wasn’t like that, I promise, I . . .”

  I stopped. From somewhere above I had heard a click. I turned slowly round. On the floor above Coral was standing in the doorway of the flat gazing down at us. When she saw me turn she smiled brightly and said: “Hi, guys. What’s up?”

  Gemma turned away from me, grinning up at her like a three-year-old with a new toy. “Coral! Look at my sari!” she called with a laugh.

  Before I could say more, she’d pushed past me and was climbing the stairs.

  I stayed on the floor below. I felt nauseous: that heavy, dragging sensation that over the last few weeks had become almost a part of me. I suppose it was partly because of Coral and the train tickets. I should have asked Gemma first, I told myself; it was arrogant to assume that like me, she would want to leave tomorrow. And perhaps I should have asked Coral if she wanted to come; after all, what harm could she do? But mostly what I felt was guilt, my constant companion. I’d been trying desperately to ignore it, to tell myself that I’d done nothing wrong. But I had, you see, I’d done something terrible.

  It was brutally simple. Steve was the love of Gemma’s life and although she didn’t know it yet, I’d stolen him from her.

  8

  Gemma gazed up at the soft, pink-blushed sky. She’d been awake for a long time, thinking about the things Coral had told her. Now, a million miles away, the silver moon was slipping imperceptibly into blue. In an hour, it would be gone; in another, her sleeping bag would be pinioned to the balcony by hot spears of sun. Beyond the railings the city was still coming into focus, the early morning mist slowly melting away. Somewhere above her head a bird chirped; from the lane below she could hear the rumble of a rickshaw’s wheels. A few minutes earlier the azan had crackled into life with its strange, melodic cry, but now it was over, the minaret of the small mosque in the market silent. In the sleepy-faced buildings that surrounded them, people were praying.

  If she wanted, she kept thinking, this could be it, all those things she’d been waiting for. She breathed in and then out, listening for her heartbeat, checking that she was still alive.

  “WHAT a bloody racket!”

  I opened my eyes and looked around. The azan had woken me from a deep, dreamless sleep. A few yards away from my head Gemma was sitting up and gazing gormlessly through the railings of the balcony.

  “It’s so loud,” I said, stretching and clicking my fingers. “No wonder the Hindus get fed up.”

  “I quite like it,” Gemma said. She didn’t look round.

  Sitting up, I started groping around the floor for my watch. “What’s the time?”

  “About five.”

  “Christ! We really need to get going.”

  I leaped up and started to stuff the various possessions that lay strewn around the balcony into my backpack.

  Esther whistled as she worked, a rough rendition of “Careless Whisper.” She was wearing a crumpled cotton dress, her eyes were puffy with sleep, and her long brown hair fell over her face in a tangled mat, yet still she was beautiful. Looking up suddenly from her packing she glanced at Gemma and winked. People always forgave her, that was the thing; everything she wanted fell straight into her lap.

  “COME on, then,” I whispered. “Let’s go.”

  We decided to leave Coral sleeping. We’d sat up late with her the night before, drinking sticky Indian rum and smoking bidis, and I didn’t see any point in waking her now. She said she’d probably stay in Calcutta a while longer, then head back up north. I was determined not to feel guilty about departing so suddenly. Backpacking was like that; we were free spirits, everything was spontaneous and unplanned. So Gemma wrote a note thanking her for giving us a bed for the night, propped it by the door, and we crept out of the flat. By the time we reached Howrah Station, the sun had risen high and bright in the sky.

  THIS time we found our seats without trouble. We bought two clay cups of chai, a bunch of bananas, and a couple of chapatis and settled down to eat our breakfast in the waiting train. At exactly seven A.M. the steam engine began to pull out of the station. As we passed through the bustees surrounding the tracks, I felt the dull weight that had been pressing on me since our arrival in Calcutta finally lift. The train rattled through miles of suburbs, eventually reaching open countryside. It was being in the city that had made me so tense, I decided as the horizon stretched and unfolded into endless shades of green; thank God we’d managed to get away. Picking up the Lonely Planet I started to thumb through its pages.

  “Apparently there are fantastic beaches in Puri,” I said after a while. “After we’ve visited the shrine we can hang out there for a bit.”

  “Okay.”

  “Then I thought maybe we could go south, to Goa . . .”

  I glanced at Gemma, who was perching on the bench next to me, her arms clasped tightly around her knees. With her mauve bangs and tasseled skirt she looked like an exotic hen. She seemed pensive; I suspected she had not heard what I’d said.

  “Or should we ask the book to decide?”

  She shrugged, then said absentmindedly: “Don’t you think Goa might be a bit too hot?”

  I paused. Her preoccupation with the climate was getting really irritating.

  “The monsoons are different in the South,” I finally said. “We’ll have to look it up. It might even be raining.”

  She sighed and leaned her head agains
t the back of her seat. Now that the train had finally picked up speed the carriage was filling with a warm breeze. She closed her eyes, then suddenly opened them wide and started to scratch violently at her wrists and arms, her nails leaving raw, red marks on her skin.

  “Chamomile lotion?”

  “It just makes it worse.”

  I eyed her wearily. It was unfair, but I couldn’t stop myself from thinking she was making an unnecessary fuss.

  “What’s happened to Middlemarch?”

  “Heroine happily married off, lessons learned, story complete.”

  “Now what?”

  “The Tin Drum.”

  The train passed over a particularly clackety section of rail, making further conversation impossible. When finally it slowed, she added:

  “Steve lent it to me.”

  The unexpected sound of his name sent the blood rushing to my cheeks. I turned my head toward the window, hoping she wouldn’t notice.

  “I didn’t know he was into reading,” I said.

  “There’s lots of things you don’t know.”

  I glanced around sharply, but she was looking at me without any apparent malice.

  “Maybe I’ll read it after you’ve finished.”

  She shrugged. “What about Paul what’s-his-name?” she suddenly said. “You’ve gone very quiet about him lately. Does he get honored with a postcard?”

  “No way. I told you, he was a mistake.”

  She raised her eyebrows meaningfully.

  “Poor sod, you’re such a femme fatale.”

  “Gem! I am not a femme fatale!”

  I laughed, probably too loudly, shaking my head and prodding her in the arm. We were sitting directly in the sun now, the light falling through the window in barred patches onto our arms and legs. She was just teasing me of course, but the label stung. I knew that over the years I’d inadvertently hurt a lot of men, but it was never something I enjoyed. They always seemed to get so intense about me, in a way that I couldn’t fathom and found impossible to reciprocate. Yet it wasn’t that I wanted to be alone either; rather, the reverse. I wanted very much to find the right person, but until I met Steve it had never felt right. Before that, even after the first date my mind would crowd with objections and misgivings. Sometimes I’d go out with someone for a couple of months, but it invariably ended in an awkward conversation or a row and I’d walk away with very little sadness and a great deal of relief. Paul, for example, who talked too much about himself and didn’t believe in foreplay, had only lasted two weeks. The truth was that I was twenty-three and the longest relationship of my life—with Luke—had only lasted four months, ending disastrously in a crumbling, cat-infested hotel in Cairo when, no longer able to pretend I wanted to be with him, I’d shamed myself by having sex with a Dutch guy while he slept in the next room, then caught the next flight home in disgrace. No, I thought dismally. I was not a femme fatale; I was a coward and a bitch. And now there was this thing with Steve.

  “Phew, I’m sweltering!” Gemma suddenly said. Standing up, she pulled the shutters down.

  I closed my eyes and tried to relax. I could smell the hot wood and metal of the train, the spicy aroma of the kedgeree the family opposite were eating from their tiffin tins, and the earthy, sweet smell of sweat. Gemma was humming to herself, apparently unfazed.

  The sun rose higher and higher in the sky and the train chugged on. Sometimes it would slow and stop for no apparent reason and for five or ten minutes we’d be marooned in the East Indian countryside, the grass buzzing with insects, the undercarriage of the train ticking in the fierce light. Then we’d jolt forward, the engine straining with the weight. In the heat-deadened center of the day, we slept, our heads lolling against each other’s shoulders, our arms thrown back.

  9

  IT was dark by the time we reached Bhubaneshwar. In the Lonely Planet I’d been reading about dormitories for twenty rupees a night, but Gemma had other ideas and nothing I said could dissuade her. She wanted air-conditioning and a shower, she declared, and not a grimy trail into the center of town for a flea-bitten bunk. I didn’t have the energy to argue. On her insistence we checked in to a small hotel opposite the station which smelled of damp but had wall-to-wall carpeting, “en-suite bathrooms,” and even a telephone. The tariff of two hundred rupees was far beyond my planned budget, but it was now late and the expression on Gemma’s face too determined for me to demur.

  The hotel had already closed for the evening. We were let in by a dozing night guard and found the proprietor asleep at the desk. Only when I bashed the bell hard with the palm of my hand did he rouse, blinking in momentary confusion and wiping his face with a large red handkerchief. He was a small, rotund young man with a brightly flowered shirt and a mustache so thin it could have been drawn on his lip with a pencil.

  “Welcome!” he cried, sitting up straight and stretching. “From what country do you hail? Please, come in, come in, you are most welcome.”

  I glanced at Gemma. A deep, irrepressible well of laughter was bubbling in my chest.

  “The U.K.,” I said simply. “Do you have rooms?”

  “Rooms aplenty! Yes, madam. You are here for how long?”

  He was scrabbling around for registration forms, glancing at the row of keys that hung behind him.

  “Just one night.”

  “And then you will travel onward to Puri, for our beautiful beaches? Or do you intend to visit the temple at Konarak?”

  He peered at us expectantly, his pen hovering above the paper.

  “Does it matter?”

  “Actually we’re going to this place, Agun Mazir,” Gemma put in. “It’s in the Simili National Park, I think. Do you know anything about it?”

  The man looked up at us perplexed. “You are hoping to catch some tigers in our great forest?” A small ridge of concern had appeared between his eyebrows.

  “No,” I said in my poshest Memsahib voice. “We’re going to visit a shrine.”

  Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Gemma frown. The man looked down.

  “Madam,” he said. “There are so many beautiful attractions here in Orissa . . . why do you wish to go to Agun Mazir? This is a religious place, not a place for tourists . . .”

  “We’ve heard it’s got special powers. We’re on a spiritual quest.”

  I smiled at him in a way that indicated I would not welcome further questions.

  “But this is a Muslim shrine,” he continued, taking no notice. “You are not Muslims, I think? And as you know, some of our people are very hurt at the moment about this book?”

  “You mean Salman Rushdie?”

  “Some of our people are very angry,” he continued quietly. He was gazing down at his fingers, which he was twisting together in an agony of embarrassment. “There have been . . . incidents. Stones thrown at some tourists in Jaipur, such like things. Our people get very emotional in such times. And this is the month of Pir Nirulla’s mela. The town will be very full, I believe. I would implore you to change your minds and visit instead our world-famous historical temple at Rajrani, in this beautiful city. After that you can rest here for a night and then travel to Puri for your own relaxation . . .”

  I looked away from the desk to the wilting pot plants and dusty, plastic covered settee of the lounge. What he was saying only heightened my desire to go to Agun Mazir. If it was going to be difficult then I’d embrace the challenge. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Gemma frowning at me, but I ignored her.

  “Do you do food here?” I said, cutting into his words with one of my brightest smiles.

  HOW could I have been so arrogant? Remembering these scenes today makes me squirm with embarrassment and regret. The poor young man was only trying to help, but I was young and pretty and British and I suppose I thought I could behave exactly as I pleased. I would do anything to change that now, but it’s too late. I keep trying to claw it back, but the past has slipped unstoppably through my fingers.

  WE were shown to ou
r rooms and brought rice, vegetable bhaji, and fried eggs by a fey young waiter who hovered vapidly at the door until we realized why he was waiting and Gemma pressed a five-rupee note into his hand. After demolishing the food we collapsed onto our beds. Gemma had turned the air-conditioning onto full, and lay stretched out on the cotton sheet, her arms upturned. The rash had spread down their entire length, breaking off at her shoulders and appearing again in angry blotches at her neck. She scratched in sudden flurries of frenzied activity, her teeth clenched as she grunted in pained relief.

  “Ahh, Christ, this itches!”

  “You’re just making it worse. What about that prickly heat powder?”

  “I tried that yesterday. It doesn’t work. Aghh . . . bollocks to this!”

  “If you do that you’re going to break all the skin and it’ll get infected.”

  She stopped scratching and looked across the room. “I just need to get out of this heat. It was being on the train all day that did it.”

  Picking up the Lonely Planet I began to leaf languidly through it.

  “Perhaps we should go to Puri,” I said vaguely.

  “I mean, what really worries me about this Agun Mazir place is the guest house. It says in that book the rooms don’t have air-conditioning or anything. And it’s right in the middle of the jungle . . .”

  “It’ll be fine . . .” I turned a page, not looking at her. “We’ll only stay there for a night or so, then we’ll head back.”

  “But I mean, like, suppose what that guy was saying is true?”

  “What guy?”

  I finally put the book down, looking across the bed at her strained face.

  “The guy at reception. He said it was this mela . . . whatsit, and . . .”

  “You mean the festival? I read about that in the book. It’s every year, on the day of his death. It should be really wild.”

  “Yeah, but what if they stone us because they think we’re agents of the devil, like old Salman?”