Sail Upon the Land
Page 28
Beached on a chaise longue in one corner was a mountainous man. His hand waved feebly at her and dropped back, his eyes were half shut and his mouth slightly open. She hurried over, dodging the pool of vomit on the floor beside him, her doctor’s instincts kicking in. She noted that the man was elderly and a dreadful cheesy colour under the natural tan of his skin, his body a great collapsed heap against the worn cushions.
She backed away from him, popped up Hari’s cradle and laid him inside, zipping it up to keep him safe. Reassuring him, she went straight back to the man.
‘What’s happened here? Do you know what’s wrong with you?’
He muttered and groaned but could not articulate. ‘I’m a doctor,’ she said. ‘I can examine you and perform some first aid, and then we must get you to hospital. Is the telephone connected? If not I might be able to get a signal on my mobile.’
He didn’t answer. She opened her medical emergency bag and took out the stethoscope, noting that his heartbeat was very rapid. His face, although pale, looked symmetrical.
There were several possibilities for this kind of collapse, but a faint memory stirred and she asked, ‘Are you diabetic?’
The man’s head rolled but he seemed to be nodding. Could it be? There really was only one person it could be. All power and prosperity, that had fuelled Ronny’s disregard for the rules of post-Independence India, were gone. The house was grubbier than ever and much more neglected. It was pitiful to see the devastation that time had wrought on Ronny’s once fine and muscular body, the flesh sagging off in great folds. He was dreadfully dehydrated. When she pressed her thumb into his arm it left a thumb-shaped pit. She thanked providence that she’d brought so much disinfectant gel with her to protect Hari, and she moved the baby’s cradle further away.
She didn’t have time to sterilise water from the taps, so she gave him nimbu paani from her thermos which he tried to gulp down. She had to ration it to stop him choking. Hari gurgled and she marveled at his patience. She could see him through the netting reaching for his bare toes.
The man managed to drink two cups over about fifteen minutes before she was able to stop. She stepped back and looked down at him.
She’d no idea what Ronny had been thinking more than twenty years ago when she’d arrived with Caroline – probably nothing very coherent. Perhaps he’d spotted the cracks in her confidence and separated her from Caroline like a leopard cutting out an antelope from the herd. Maybe it had just been a whim to woo her because he liked well-educated English girls, and they were thin on the ground at the Vhilaki Guest House – but then things had got out of hand. One thing she was sure of, she’d said no and meant it. Now he was helpless. She could just walk away and leave him lying there – the perfect revenge for a ruined life. Except that she couldn’t and wouldn’t. She was a doctor and her life wasn’t ruined at all.
She turned away, her eyes filling with tears. It might not be a ruined life, but what would it have been like if she’d left with Caroline and dodged her fate? A husband and family of her own? Self-pity darkened her thoughts.
Like the sun coming up, the reality of Leeta and Hari pushed aside the darkness in her mind. She remembered Ronny carrying her through the warm night and into this house. Not locking her into a room, just leaving. She even remembered him saying ‘Sorry’. Sorry didn’t really cover it.
Whatever had happened then, right now Ronny was in need of her skills.
She bent down close to him and asked: ‘Do you have a proper insulin kit, and if so where is it?’ His sunken eyes opened slightly and rolled towards the door. ‘Upstairs?’ she asked. He nodded.
She took Hari out of his cradle and tucked him under her arm, running out of the room and up the staircase. She’d never been into his bedroom of course, but imagined it would be at the front of the house. She tried various doors off the well-remembered corridor lined with trophies and found many of them locked. Then she saw one slightly ajar and made for it. Inside the room smelt badgery and looked neglected. The mahogany four-poster had a grubby-looking mosquito net draped over it and the sheets were grey and half off the mattress. This must be it. She glanced around the room, spotting what she needed on the bedside table. A red nylon zip-up case lay open, alcohol swab sachets and testing strips scattered on the floor and the bed. She was relieved to see he had a digital blood glucose metre, as well as pen-style syringes full of insulin.
He must’ve been struck with weakness while downstairs. Risky to live alone in a remote place but perhaps he was so used to his diabetes that he thought he could handle it. It can’t have been more than twenty-four hours since it’d started or he’d very likely be dead. He was lucky she’d arrived in time to reverse what was probably diabetic ketoacidosis or something similar. The symptoms were all there including the faint whiff of pear drops on his breath. She knew that confusion often led patients to misread the signals of onrushing disaster.
The presence of his kit could only help her diagnosis, and she gathered it all together with one hand and ran back down the stairs.
With Hari back in his cradle, she put on gloves and wiped Ronny’s hands with a swab before pricking his fingertip to add drop of blood to a test strip and read the results on his metre. As she had suspected, his blood glucose reading was high. She injected him with insulin. After a few minutes, while she monitored his return to full consciousness, she found herself cradling his grizzled head in her arm and encouraging him to take more sips of nimbu paani. First aid to begin with, then she’d telephone the hospital and get him cleaned up. A little colour was coming back into his face. She waited until his breathing was settled and he appeared more comfortable, and then she said:
‘You’re Ronny Viphur, aren’t you?
‘Yes indeed and who are you?’
‘I’m a doctor. I was passing and decided to come and visit the old place. Oh, you wouldn’t remember me. I was just some girl who stayed here years ago.’ She sighed and then said. ‘Do you think the telephone is working?’
‘I don’t know.’
His eyes began to close again. He was not acting particularly rationally and she worried that there was some other underlying issue. She picked up Hari again and hurried in search of a phone. She had her Indian mobile phone but in such a remote place a signal would be a lucky chance. She found an old black telephone with a corkscrew cord and lifted the receiver. No tone.
She switched on the mobile and began to walk about. She was relieved to find a single bar of signal in the hall which increased to four bars as she went up the stairs.
She went back to him.
‘We need to get you to a hospital. I’ve found a signal, who should I call?’
He was drifting again. She shook his shoulder and he looked at her bewildered, then seemed to come to and said. ‘Try 108 or 112. Same as English 999.’
‘I am sorry,’ he said. Just for one mad second she thought he had recognised her and remembered.
‘For the mess.’
‘Oh, don’t worry about that. I’ll clean that up while we wait for the paramedics.’
She was connected with remarkable speed to the emergency doctor at the hospital in Rikipur. She told her that she was with Ronny Viphur at the Vhilaki Hunting Lodge and described his condition. The doctor explained there was no road for an ambulance to get to isolated dwellings in the forest. Only an all-terrain motorbike could manage it, with two paramedics to carry Ronny to the rack train that set off back down the mountain at four o’clock.
Before describing the history as far as she knew it and probable diagnosis to the doctor, she mentioned that Ronny was very large and heavy, and to carry him on a stretcher all the way to the station would take two strong men.
The doctor said she would send such men, and agreed that she didn’t think Ronny was now in any immediate danger, although he would probably need intravenous rehydration. Damson explained that she would make him as comfortable as she could, and the other doctor told her to ring back at any time, and that th
e bike would be on its way soon.
Now it was time to clean up. Hari had gone to sleep. Hesitating only for an instant, she slipped out of the room, this time looking for a bucket, cloths and disinfectant. She ran around the house gathering what she needed, going back to the sitting room to check on Hari and, she realised, his grandfather, to whom she gave further sips of fluid.
In the kitchen, she managed to light the stove, filling the kettle and putting it on to boil.
When she returned, Hari was beginning to grumble in his cradle He didn’t like being confined, or lying on his back for too long with nothing to play with but his toes. Clearly feeling better, Ronny had rolled slightly on to his side and was peering in Hari’s direction.
‘What have you got there? A baby? Why did you bring a baby up here? Who are you?’
‘Right, my name is Damson Hayes. I stayed here in 1987.’ She hesitated, watching him. He registered no recognition.
‘Why are you here now? I closed the Guest House twenty years ago.’
‘I’m not sure really. Various things happened in England that made it seem like a good idea. Now just relax and I’ll make you more comfortable.’
She pulled on silicon examination gloves and cleaned up the vomit with disinfectant. Then she turned her attention to Ronny, washing his face and hands. He submitted, murmuring, ‘Something is wrong with my legs. I was very ill and came to lie down in here.’
Damson let him carry on talking about himself for a bit. He seemed to have forgotten why he was interested in her presence at all.
Hari was beginning to cry intermittently which added to the stress of the situation. She found a narrow necked jug in the kitchen and offered it to Ronny as a urine bottle. She threw everything that smelt out of the front door and opened the windows to let in the clean sunny air.
Once more she went out to the kitchen to boil yet another kettle and wash and disinfect her own hands before picking up Hari and a jar of pureed vegetables for his lunch. In the now Dettol-scented room, she pulled up a chair beside Ronny and prepared to explain her presence while she fed Hari.
‘Now,’ she said. ‘If you’re feeling better, we need to talk. First, as I mentioned before, I am Damson Hayes. When I was staying here in 1987, we spent some time together, riding and so on, and there was an incident. After which I ran away.’
He turned towards her.
‘You. You’re Damson?’ He looked shocked. ‘I remember. Oh God, I am so sorry.’
Tears started to course down his drooping cheeks. Nothing was left of the virile man she had fallen for so catastrophically.
‘Yes, I am Damson.’
They were silent for a bit. Then he said, ‘I will go to the police as soon as I am better. Turn myself in.’
She shook her head.
He explained he’d been bitterly ashamed and upset when he found her gone the next morning and had tried to trace her. He hadn’t had the heart to continue with the Guest House after that and it had dwindled to nothing quite soon. He told her that he felt as if a monster had been unleashed, and he didn’t trust himself ever again to have young European women staying in his compound. She looked at the broken heap of a man on the sofa and an old anger stirred inside her.
‘But you always had a choice. You could’ve stopped yourself.’
She might have done all she could to help him medically but she wasn’t going to let him off the hook. She knew it was wrong to stir up strong emotions in a sick and ageing man, someone whose relationship to her was that of patient to doctor, but there might not be another opportunity.
After a while he asked her who she’d married and where was her husband.
‘I never did marry,’ she replied, explaining that the baby wasn’t hers. That he was in fact her grandson. Then she said: ‘He’s your grandson too.’
The look on his face was one of the purest astonishment and then to her surprise a smile moved his sore lips.
‘Grandson?’
‘Yes. What passed between us produced a daughter and this is her child.’
He rolled stiffly on to his back and put his hands over his face.
‘There are no descendants. The family dies out after my brother and myself. And now this.’ He sighed, wiped his eyes with back of his hand and began to explain.
‘None of this is any excuse, but you must know that I had a wife long ago. It was a suitable arranged marriage and we were very young. At that time, my mother was still alive and we all lived in the haveli down in Rikipur. They couldn’t get my brother to marry, so the idea was that Tara and I would produce lots of heirs to the whole bang shoot. She had a good dowry and we were happy for a while. I’d been educated in England and I realised my brother was homosexual. But of course nothing was said to our mother. She went on presenting suitable girls, and the story was that he was just very fussy.’
‘Is he still alive, your brother?’
‘Oh yes, he still lives in a small part of the haveli. I don’t see him very often. He never did marry and our mother was very sad, but then she died. And Tara never got pregnant, and after a very short while she wouldn’t let me into her bedroom. Then she began to stay up later and later, and finally all night, sleeping during the day. It was impossible to lead any kind of normal life. She would blunder all around the haveli or disappear and turn up in the Bombay Hilton days later, having spent so much money.
‘So we were divorced, and her family, which was old, rich and powerful, began to spread rumours about me. I was threatened with public disgrace. They pretended to believe her stories which were fantasies from her diseased brain. Certainly no other family would accept me as a bridegroom.’
Ronny appeared to have no empathy for the poor girl's illness. He was thinking only of himself. It was all of a piece with what he had done to her.
He stopped and looked at her, saying, ‘Given what I did to you, you may not believe me.’
Damson nodded. Hari had finished his lunch so she gave him a cup to drink from.
Ronny went on: ‘I had to come up here to get away from it. The family had always known she was sick but had managed to conceal it for long enough to marry her off. That’s where most of my money went too.’
He lay back again exhausted. She hadn’t known anything about him she realised, just the rumour that he was educated in England and related to a local thakur. It had seemed rude to ask somehow. This was the first personal conversation they’d ever had. Then he was speaking again.
‘I remember enjoying your company,’ he said.
Damson looked at him. She felt it was much too late for that.
‘You had a daughter? Mine?’
‘Yes, yours,’ she said briskly, irritated by his questioning tone.
‘What did you do?’
‘I had to have her adopted.’
‘I’m sorry.’ He didn’t ask why, he could probably imagine. She cuddled Hari close. He twiddled her growing hair and sucked his fingers while she talked.
‘She was fine,’ she reassured him. ‘An Indian family took her. Doctors. She was very happy. But then she found she was going to have a baby rather by mistake so she came to find me for help. She left Hari with me to look after and I decided to come back here. I’m not sure why, something to do with closing the loop.’
‘Lucky for me you did as you’re a doctor,’ he said.
‘Your daughter is a doctor too or at least studying to be one.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Leeta Delapi. I called her Mellita and her parents gave her a name that sounded like her birth name.’
Ronny said nothing. Damson wondered what he was thinking but then decided she didn’t really care. This had all been for her not for him. His rescue had been incidental. She broke the silence:
‘It was a long time ago, nobody died and I have Hari now. You’ll probably recover. But I don’t think we can meet again.’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. He seemed sad and resigned, too ill for extreme emotions. He’d stepped
so close to death. Then he summoned up some strength: ‘But the baby,’ he said. ‘Please write to me about the baby and his mother.’ She nodded.
‘No one left. No descendants. The family was dying out until now. It’s important.’ He reached out and touched Hari’s head. ‘Thank you for coming back and bringing him to me.’
Damson was startled to realise she hadn’t factored in the blood relationship between Hari and Ronny, let alone Leeta, and that it might be important to them all in terms of family. She’d known nothing about the Viphurs and their haveli in Rikipur. Another complication. Nothing could happen without consequences. She would think about that later. So this wasn’t – this couldn’t be – a closed loop.
They heard the sound of the bike arriving at the front door. Damson went to greet the paramedics, having put Hari back down in his cradle. She left them to prepare Ronny and move him on to a stretcher, packing a few things for his stay in hospital while they did so. He said little, just confirmed his name. Thankfully, the men didn’t think to question what she was doing there. She’d simply introduced herself as Dr Hayes.
She got herself and Hari organised, changing his nappy and giving him a wash, and then followed the carrying party up to Hunters’ Halt for the four o’clock train. The two men positioned the stretcher in one of the carriages, and one paramedic stayed with Ronny for the journey, while the other went back through the trees to follow them on the bike down to Rikipur. Having said a brief goodbye to Ronny, and promising to write care of Viphur Haveli, she went to a carriage at the other end of the train.
Thirty-five
Damson
April 2009
The villa was surrounded by palm trees about five minutes’ walk from a beach strewn with coconut husks, and half a mile from the village. It belonged to a schoolfriend of Noonie’s called Susannah Hall, a trustafarian and latterday hippie, who had bought it for fun but then found the attitude of the local police to cannabis a bit restricting. Now they rented it out when they were organised enough to get a tenant.