One Thousand Stars and You

by Isabelle Broom

  ‘Freds never forgets – he makes a massive deal out of it if I ever leave him hanging. Maybe it just didn’t deliver or something – I might message him again,’ she decided.

  ‘You had better be trapped under something heavy, unable to reach your phone,’ she read aloud as she typed, ‘or there will be hell to pay, Mister.’

  Steph giggled.

  ‘There.’ Alice stowed her phone in her bag and clasped her hands together. ‘That ought to do it.’

  Maureen sucked at her teeth in what sounded like irritation, and Jamal glanced her way.

  ‘Everything OK?’ he asked.

  ‘Fine,’ she said, tossing her mane of dark hair around like a stroppy pony and picking up the bottle of Lion Lager that the waiter had just deposited in front of her. ‘Now, are we going to get drunk, or what?’

  32

  It was a subdued group of five who tossed their backpacks into the minibus the following morning, and Alice clutched her head with both hands after she clambered into the seat by the window. Getting absolutely hammered when you had to be up at six a.m. the next day was not the best idea Alice had ever had – but then it had been a lot of fun. Well, the parts of the night she could remember, anyway. She knew there had been singing, and a copious amount of beer, and quite possibly a game of I Have Never.

  ‘I feel sick,’ muttered Steph from behind her, and Alice hid her laugh behind her hand. Maureen, who was up in her habitual spot next to the driver and wearing a ‘birthday girl’ badge pinned to her vest top, wound down the window to allow some air into the van, then let out a long, hung-over groan.

  Doctor Perera had come out to wave them off, having insisted that they all have a photo taken with him for his guest book. ‘All my sons and daughters,’ he told Alice proudly, tapping the book’s brown leather front. She wondered what had encouraged him to open the doors of his beautiful house to foreign strangers after what she guessed must have been a long and hectic career. But then again, she was learning that this was the Sri Lankan way – all the people she had encountered so far were as open with their homes as they seemed to be with their hearts.

  It would take them at least three hours to reach Pudumayaki National Park, by which time Alice hoped that her lingering headache would have lost the battle against the two paracetamol she had taken after breakfast. She had noticed Max swallow what looked like painkillers, too, but guessed that his were more to combat the pain in his leg than the after-effects of too much alcohol. In fact, he didn’t seem to be suffering much at all in that regard, and had assured her that he was ‘peachy, thanks’ when she asked if he was OK.

  As the minibus continued to wind down through the hills, Alice’s beer-sozzled mind began to feel soothed by the scenery. They left behind the deep valleys and dark shiny leaves of the tea plantations and drove past plains flooded with water. The mountains were still visible, but far away now, in the distance, their irregular outlines blurred by the dancing heat. The further south they journeyed, the more traffic they encountered, and the thicker and more humid the air pouring in through the open windows.

  Jamal opened a packet of crisps and passed them round, feeding some straight into Steph’s open mouth. He had presented her with a beautiful sarong as a birthday gift the day before, and promised to treat her to dinner on the South Bank in London when they met up back in England. It had made Alice mull over what present Rich would have bought her this year. In the past, he had nearly always forgone romantic gestures in favour of practical offerings, bestowing her with such treats as a NutriBullet, new brake pads for her dilapidated old Mini and a year-long membership to English Heritage. They were useful gifts, if a little unsexy, and Alice appreciated the thought that he put into them. However, she had, on occasion, wished that he would buck the trend and pick her out some lingerie, or even just choose her some perfume. That wasn’t Rich, though. If it wasn’t a useful, everyday item, then he did not see the point in wasting his money. Alice, who knew herself well enough to realise that her desire for frivolous goodies came from the side of her personality Rich did not like to see, had always done her best to ignore the cravings.

  They finally arrived at Pudumayaki National Park a little before their booked safari slot of ten a.m., eager to get out into the sunshine and stretch their legs after the long journey. Max used his crutches to lever himself down to the dusty ground, only to chuck them back on to the minibus floor afterwards. Alice saw Jamal shake his head, but he chose not to comment.

  It was an excursion that they had all been looking forward to, and Maureen was adamant that they would see not only the promised elephants, but also leopards and sloth bears, too – purely because it was her birthday. Alice privately hoped that they would, if only to cheer her friend up a bit. While Maur had not actually said as much, Alice noticed that she was not her usual feisty self – hadn’t been since the train journey from Kandy to Hatton – and she still had no idea why.

  As soon as the minibus doors were locked and their driver had settled himself down on a nearby deckchair, Steph and Maureen scampered off to the ladies’ – unfortunately little more than a few holes in the ground surrounded by flimsy fences and no roof – while Jamal headed to the ticket hut to find out which jeep they would be in. Alice and Max were left alone, save for an inquisitive monkey, which was peering down at them through the branches of an overhanging tree.

  ‘How’s the head?’ Max asked, nudging her foot with his.

  Alice squinted at him through her sunglasses.

  ‘Better than it was. Yours?’

  Max tapped his knuckles against his temple. ‘Not even a whisper of a hangover,’ he said, sounding proud. ‘All those years of heavy army drinking turned my liver to iron.’

  ‘What a legacy,’ she joked in reply.

  ‘Or a leg you no longer see,’ he quipped, and Alice chuckled as she mischievously kicked a clump of dust at him.

  ‘Bad news.’ Jamal was back, and he waited until the approaching Steph and Maureen were within range before continuing. ‘There’s two big groups of German travellers arriving any minute, and they’ve pre-booked, too, apparently, so we have to share with them.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ Max began, but Jamal shook his head.

  ‘We can’t all fit in one jeep – the guy says it’s three in one and two in the other, so …’

  ‘Girls and boys?’ suggested Maureen, not looking too thrilled about it.

  Steph just about managed not to pout at the prospect of being separated from Jamal.

  ‘I don’t mind, either way,’ Alice said pragmatically, looking at Max, who shrugged.

  ‘Why don’t we draw straws?’ Jamal declared, pulling some twigs off the lowest branches of the monkey tree. ‘Shortest two in one, longest three in the other?’

  It seemed fair, but Alice had to roll her eyes when she saw Jamal wiggle one of the twigs he offered to Steph. Why he hadn’t just said from the off that he and Steph would go together in one jeep, she didn’t know. Men were baffling sometimes.

  Maureen, somewhat predictably, positioned herself between Max and Alice when they finally climbed into their jeep, but whether it was because of a desire to be close to him or as far away as possible from the large, hairy German guy bringing up the rear, Alice couldn’t be sure.

  They set off along a muddy track peppered with potholes, Maureen, Alice and the hairy German all standing up and holding on to the metal bar in the centre of the jeep, and Max sitting down with Mister Tee outstretched, his sunglasses over his eyes and a contented smile on his face. The wind lifted his short fringe, blowing the light-brown tendrils up and to the right, and Alice stared at his muscular forearm, which he had angled out of the open side of the truck. The veins in his hand bulged with the effort of holding on, his knuckles white beneath his skin, and his daypack, which he’d propped up against the outer wall, slid to the floor between his trainers as they accelerated.

  ‘Look,’ said Maureen, and Alice raised guilty eyes just in time to see a large liz
ard vanishing into the treeline ahead of them, its tail swinging like a rudder.

  ‘I think I dated him once,’ Maureen added, and Max snuffled with laughter below them.

  After the lizard, there seemed to be living creatures everywhere they looked, from boisterous families of monkeys to brightly coloured birds to intricately patterned butterflies, all of which seemed duly unfazed by a jeep full of gawping tourists crashing past them. Birds that were little more than a blur of colour in the tallest treetops were transformed through the viewfinder of Alice’s camera into regal kingfishers, emerald bee-eaters and beady-eyed fantails. They spotted green parrots, peacocks, and hundreds of tiny, flat-footed lizards, which moved so fast that Alice would be left wondering if she had seen them at all.

  The two-jeep convoy continued along the edge of a wide and boisterous river, which was lined on either side by trees, their branches knotted together tightly as if they were grasping hands. In places where the dense thickets thinned, Alice glimpsed small meadows dotted with flowers, or sparse trees the shape of mushrooms. Life appeared to be thriving here, and Alice found herself buoyed by the sheer amount of growth, and scents, and nature. Again and again, she snapped away with her camera, trying to capture through images what she knew she would be unable to recall once she left Sri Lanka – the euphoric feeling of experiencing something completely new.

  Finally, just as Alice was starting to worry that her battery would soon run out, the jeep swerved off the rough pathway into a clearing and there, standing not twenty feet away from them, was an elephant.

  The driver braked and turned in his seat.

  ‘Ah,’ he told them proudly. ‘Elephant! A male – young bull.’

  The elephant looked over in their direction, his trunk poised below a half-stripped branch, ready to tear off more leaves. With his smile-shaped mouth and doleful eyes, he seemed to Alice to be more like a giant toy than a wild animal, but he was majestic, too. Seeing him standing there, in his natural environment, having a spot of lunch while they stared at him like the unwanted intruders that they were, felt both miraculous and treacherous at the same time. Alice didn’t know whether to be wowed or ashamed.

  ‘He’s quite something, isn’t he?’ whispered Max, who had stood up beside her. Maureen, who had just finished filming a video of them for her Instagram story, was using her fingers to zoom in on the elephant with her iPhone camera.

  ‘Here,’ Alice offered him her camera. ‘You can see him really well through this.’

  Max thanked her and squinted through the viewfinder. The camera strap was still around Alice’s neck, so he was forced to shuffle even closer to her, and she felt tingles shooting through every part of her body that was touching his. She felt so alert when she was with Max – alert and alive. Maureen was always lecturing her and Steph about the benefits of mindfulness, of being in the moment and savouring it, appreciating it. That was how Alice felt around Max, as if every single separate moment could be stretched out like bubble gum. She wished she could pick one and stay in it, suspended in time, safe in the knowledge that she would not have to go back to the reality of her everyday life.

  They were only halfway through their time in Sri Lanka, but already Alice felt panicked at the thought of the holiday ending, and of having to go home.

  33

  After leaving behind the lone male elephant in the clearing, Alice, Maureen and Max’s driver happily informed them and the German passengers that the next stop would be one of the park’s central tanks, a huge lake where much of the wildlife would congregate to bathe, drink and, in the case of the elephants, socialise. As they bumped slowly closer, however, it became clear very quickly that it was also the spot where all the jeeps converged, too, and Alice was shocked to see so many vehicles in such a relatively small area. She had imagined that the safari would be a more timid and reserved experience, and that the jeep they were in would always stay a safe and respectful distance away from the animals, but it was becoming horribly clear that this was not the case with every driver in the sanctuary.

  It was easy to understand what drew them all here, though, because there were at least sixty to seventy elephants in the area, ranging in both age and size, not to mention a vast colony of painted storks, large-bellied pelicans and hundreds of bandy-legged egrets. Alice thought they looked like miniature doctors in their feathery white coats, and she said as much to Maureen and Max as the three of them watched the birds tiptoe on their spindly black legs around the groups of enormous grazing elephants.

  The driver parked a discreet distance away from the water’s edge, before explaining in broken English that the egrets were in situ to catch the falling insects from the mouthfuls of grass pulled up by the elephants. Alice watched entranced as a mother elephant gathered one heap, shook it gently up and down to remove any bugs, then passed it into the waiting mouth of her offspring. The baby elephants stuck close to their mothers, while the older females in the group formed a protective outer ring around them. Just like me, thought Alice, amused by the image of herself as a baby elephant – except she had not grown up as a clingy child; she had been mollycoddled into one.

  On the surface, the scene was almost tranquil, but there was another feeling, too – an edge that Alice could sense rather than see. Glancing down instinctively to see what Max’s take on it was, she found that he, too, seemed tense, his eyes wide and his fists clenched. She put a tentative hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Everything all right?’ she asked quietly.

  Max nodded once, but didn’t smile, and Alice saw beads of perspiration amongst the stubble on his upper lip. He was radiating nerves, and knowing it made Alice nervous, too. Maureen, on the flipside, was back in good humour and in her element, asking the driver endless questions and pleading with the Germans at the front to take photos of her with all the assorted wildlife visible in the background.

  ‘You want to go closer for pictures?’ asked the driver, eager to please, and Maureen clapped her hands together with a ‘yay’ of relish just as Alice shook her head, her protestations drowned out by the engine restarting. They rolled slowly across the grass, inch by stealthy inch, Alice cringing inwardly with discomfort as they drew almost level with three rather wizened-looking elephants, before continuing towards where the lake curved down into a shallow spoon shape. There must be at least thirty jeeps here now, Alice counted roughly, the guilt of being there now far bigger than the joy she’d felt at seeing such incredible animals up close. Too many. Some were bonnet-to-boot, too, with elephants from the same family group trapped on either side, unable to get through. She could see that many of them had begun tossing their trunks and swaying from side to side with agitation.

  ‘I don’t like this,’ she said aloud, and Max stood up again, his hand clammy as it fell across hers.

  ‘Me neither,’ he agreed, his expression grim.

  Maureen looked at the two of them, seemingly bemused. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘The elephants must be used to these jeeps. They come through here every day, after all.’

  It was a fair point, but it did little to quell the unease pricking at the back of Alice’s neck. Max didn’t even reply, merely frowned in concentration at the back of the driver’s head, as if willing him to steer them away through sheer force of will. Unfortunately, however, the driver was enjoying keeping his passengers happy too much to notice, and was now pointing out a new group of elephants that had just emerged from the undergrowth and were heading straight for them.

  ‘This one, the big lady,’ he said, gesturing to the mighty elephant at the rear of the pack. ‘She is Kane Hila. It is meaning “hole in the ear”. She get this after she was injured by a train one day. It struck her baby.’ He slapped his hands together. ‘Bang. Dead. No more elephant.’

  ‘That’s awful,’ cried Maureen, and the driver nodded.

  ‘Yes, very sad. Since that day, Kane Hila is very much not liking people and the trains,’ he added, glancing at the approaching elephant before continuing. ‘She
is sometimes becoming angry and making threats – this is why you must always stay here, in the jeep. Do not get out.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Max muttered under his breath, his gaze never leaving the approaching herd. Alice could tell that he was on high alert – she could almost hear the hammering of his heart against the inside wall of his chest – and she longed to reach out and reassure him with a touch.

  ‘Why is she doing that?’ Maureen murmured, turning to Alice and then back to where Kane Hila was now standing, not ten feet away, swaying her body from side to side with alarming regularity.

  ‘She’s upset,’ Alice replied, even though that much was obvious.

  ‘Erm, excuse me,’ Maureen called out to the driver, her usually calm voice wobbling with trepidation. The driver didn’t hear her; he was too busy taking photos of the Germans and telling a story about how he’d seen an eagle attack a fox on the shore of the lake.

  ‘He pick him up – whoosh – up in the air, and the fox he screams and cries, and I scream, but then the—’

  Alice never got to hear how the story ended, because the next thing she was aware of was a loud shriek of terror in her ear, followed by a crash. The floor seemed to disappear from under her, and she was thrown sideways hard, her head snapping forwards and connecting with Max’s. There was a second crash, followed by a bellow and the sound of car horns, lots of them. Alice felt wetness on her face and brought up her hand to discover blood. Her nose throbbed, and she let out a sob of terror as she looked to her right and saw the enraged elephant, Kane Hila, glaring straight at her with her trunk raised. She had barged into the jeep and almost knocked it clean over. The realisation hit Alice hard, and she reached unthinkingly for Max, her hand slapping instead against the metal floor of the truck.

  The driver was shouting at the elephant now, a large wooden pole in his shaking hands, but Alice didn’t want to watch. She could see that Maureen was being shielded by the hairy German, her hands clamped over her face, while everyone else in the jeep and those surrounding was screaming and yelling.