After Everything

by Suellen Dainty

  ‘Hello, Mr Ellison. So good to meet you at last. Tell me, what are your plans?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m going to show Dad the temple and then we might meet Annie,’ said Emily.

  ‘Will you be here tonight? To help prepare for the class?’ asked Samten.

  ‘Of course,’ she replied, bowing her head.

  ‘Very good to meet you, Mr Ellison,’ said Samten. ‘I hope you enjoy your time here.’ Samten joined his hands together in a farewell gesture and walked down the steps, his shoes clattering against the stones.

  ‘It’s so beautiful, isn’t it, Dad,’ breathed Emily, gazing at his departing figure. ‘Sometimes I think I’ll stay here forever.’

  I’m jealous of Samten, thought Sandy, and I’m scared of losing her. She cares about him more than she cares about me. Even Matt had appeared starstruck, giving a little farewell bow.

  Sandy wished he could see what they saw, but he didn’t. That was the problem. He felt like old Gerard wrestling with his faith and his God and his loneliness. It was so much easier to be a rusty old cynic. And yet, if he really was a genuine cynic, a true non-believer, why did he cleave to a religious poet like Hopkins? The thing to do, Sandy concluded, was to stop thinking. It was clear his psyche was a stranger to him, and always had been. No amount of exploration at this stage of his life would change things.

  ‘What about lunch?’ he said, sticking to the obvious. ‘Where shall we go?’

  There was a café just outside the gardens, run by followers of the temple. The three of them perched on stools at a counter below a large window looking out over the valley, now shrouded in mist. On the horizon opposite, mountain peaks floated above the clouds. As they were deciding what to eat, Emily’s mobile rang. It was Annie, saying she would meet them in about half an hour. They ordered vegetable curry and rice while they waited for her. Sandy was curious to meet Annie. Emily had told him she’d been at Oxford too, a bit after Sandy, but had left before finishing her degree.

  Before their food arrived, he went outside to the toilet. He’d got used to positioning himself on the metal treads, and was surprised to find a block of clean Western-style lavatories. At the other end of the row of urinals, he overheard two men talking.

  ‘I can’t work out why it took me so long,’ said one in a strong southern American accent.

  ‘I know exactly what you mean,’ came a German-accented reply. ‘It’s so simple and yet so true. I’m absolutely certain of the truth of it.’

  Well, thought Sandy. Good that someone was certain about something. He’d been so sure of everything when he was younger, at university. There were no blurred edges then.

  Back at the table, a woman in her fifties was sitting with Emily and Matthew. Her face was thin and angled, dominated by wide-set hazel eyes. Her grey hair was pulled back in a ponytail and her shapeless trousers and brown tunic almost, but not quite, obscured her lean frame. Like most of the Western women he saw here, she didn’t wear makeup or jewellery.

  Sandy introduced himself and sat down. The conversation meandered around teachings at the temple, mountain walks and a retreat centre further up the valley. Annie had lived in the town most of her adult life, working for a charity that built schools and provided basic medical care.

  ‘You can do so much with so little here,’ she told Sandy. There was something familiar in the intonation of her voice, and its high, light tone, as if he’d met her before but couldn’t remember where.

  ‘At the first school we set up, most of the children had dysentery a lot of the time, and chronic eye infections. But with soap and water, just basic hygiene, we got rid of the infections pretty quickly,’ she continued. ‘It’s often ordinary things that make a difference. And we’re trying not to build empires. They’ve had enough of that. It’s more self-determination we’re looking at.’

  Annie might have lived away from England for decades, but she still stuck to old-fashioned conversational etiquette. They might have been in a London drawing room. She had spoken about herself. It was time now to talk about him.

  ‘You must be so proud of Emily, what she’s doing here, studying and learning. And Matt, for joining her.’ He hadn’t thought of that. He’d always imagined Emily’s time here as an escape from the real world, and Matt’s decision to join her as an excuse to leave his druggy London life. He nodded, not knowing what to say.

  ‘And you, Sandy,’ she continued in the same high, light voice, ‘Emily’s told me about your songwriting. How wonderful to have a talent like that.’

  ‘I’m not sure I’d call it an actual talent.’ He was embarrassed, not having thought of himself as a songwriter for so many years. ‘But it was something I always wanted to do. And it worked for a while. I mean, I loved it. I loved music, the whole business. But I think my parents were right. Law or medicine would have been a steadier occupation.’

  Annie smiled. ‘Maybe then you wouldn’t have been happy. Emily said you were at Oxford. Did you like it there?’

  ‘It was a long time ago,’ he replied. ‘But yes, I did like it. I didn’t realise then what a privilege all that was. I just took it all for granted.’

  A young boy, wearing jeans three sizes too big, deposited plates of steaming curry and rice in front of them. Sandy began to eat. He was hungry after the walk and the food was delicious. Emily and Matthew were wolfing it down. Annie ate more decorously, looking out at the valley between mouthfuls, sipping her water. There was something about her profile, something he thought he recognised but couldn’t recall.

  ‘I was there too,’ said Annie. ‘But I didn’t stay the course. I know everyone is meant to just adore university, but it wasn’t like that for me. Too many fashions and cliques, everyone posturing and getting drunk, wandering around thinking they owned the world.’

  ‘What made you leave England and come here?’ he asked.

  She turned to face him. He hadn’t noticed before, but her lower lip was unusually curved.

  ‘I had a sister, a few years older than me. She was at Oxford too. She died.’ She smiled in the way people do in moments of pain, the false hearty smile designed to convince themselves, as well as the person to whom they are speaking, that the grief is over, dealt with. Her voice, however, was flat and cold. She stopped eating and wiped her mouth with a handkerchief.

  His hands, Sandy realised, were shaking. He felt this strange darkness, a closing in from his past. He was absolutely certain that Annie was Polly’s sister. All those minuscule pinpricks of recognition; it had to be her. She spoke like Polly, the same lyrical intonation. And her profile, the sharply angled cheekbones, the curve of her mouth. The smell of the curry, only seconds before so fragrant and tasty, was nauseating.

  He would have to tell her, tell all of them. He would have to face Annie’s anger, his children’s revulsion at what he had done and how he had obscured it for so many years. Any minute now, he would have to speak, expose himself and, yes, feel the scorn from his children for the crime he had committed.

  ‘Everything okay, Dad?’ asked Emily. ‘You look a bit done in.’

  ‘No, I’m good,’ he replied.

  Sandy glanced at Annie. It was impossible to tell if she had been beautiful or plain as a young girl; what colour her hair had been, the bloom of her complexion. Still, she had to be Polly’s sister, even though he couldn’t remember Polly ever mentioning she had a sister or a brother. The chances of anything else were too remote; the level of coincidence too high. Those degrees of separation, however many there were, had been whittled down to practically zero. He’d read about it on some website, during his online trawls back in Battersea. Everyone, somehow, had become connected to everyone else.

  Annie trailed a long bony finger across the table. Her hand dropped to her lap. ‘I adored my sister,’ she said. ‘She was so kind, so beautiful and brilliant. There was just the two of us. When we were kids we were completely inseparable. Maybe it was because our parents were so much older, in a different world. So her death hit me har
d.’

  He tried to arrange his face in what he hoped was an appropriate expression of empathy. He nodded and leaned back in his chair, thinking to offer some commiseration, act like a normal person. But the nerves in his cheeks and forehead began to twitch and jump. He couldn’t regain his composure and he began to weep, gushes of tears running down his face.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Sandy. ‘I’m so very sorry.’

  Emily and Matthew turned to him in alarm, but he couldn’t stop crying or saying he was sorry. Everything turned in on itself. He was back by the side of the road, in the rain; Jeremy shouting and Sandy weeping as he stroked Polly’s face, tried to keep her warm, willing her to live as her breath grew strangled and jerky and then, finally, ceased. Sandy wiped his cheeks, his face contorted and flushed.

  ‘Could you ever forgive the person responsible?’

  He put his hands over his eyes. There was a cool hand touching his, stroking it. The hand didn’t feel like Emily’s. It felt older, more paper-like, reminding him of his mother. The temptation to stay silent was overwhelming. But he couldn’t stuff it all back inside himself again and pretend nothing had happened, exist like some blinkered zombie. He would have to face them – Annie, Emily and Matthew – and be an honest human being for one of the very few times in his life. He would have to do it immediately.

  Annie’s voice cut across his thoughts. ‘It wasn’t anyone’s fault,’ she said. Her voice was calm, but puzzled. ‘It was a terrible thing to happen to her and she suffered horribly at the end. But no one planned her death. No one knew it was going to happen. It was leukaemia. My sister died of leukaemia.’

  He heard the word, registered its four syllables and in his mind saw it spelled out. He remembered it came from the ancient Greek words meaning ‘white’ and ‘blood’ before he realised its meaning. He scrubbed at his eyes until they hurt and opened them, blinded for a minute by the light.

  So everything had been coincidence and chance, despite the diminished degrees of separation. There had been no fate-laden synchronicity. Everything he thought was so familiar about Annie was based on nothing more than his own faulty and guilty imagination. He should have known. England was full of regions where people spoke with the same intonation, even the same timbre. It was a tiny crammed island. In every crowded room, every airport or railway station, complete strangers might claim kinship on the angle of a jawline, the flare of a nostril. Even then, thinking all this, contradicting everything he’d told himself only minutes before, it took some time to realise that Annie had begun to speak again.

  ‘All cancer is so cruel, particularly at the end. I couldn’t deal with it, and I ran away, had a kind of protracted breakdown. I couldn’t stay in England. A couple of years later, my parents died and there seemed no point in going back. I prefer it here. People like Samten have taught me so much. Samten would say death is natural, and we must accept it as inevitable. To face death in peace, we must learn to live in peace.’

  Tim would have said Sandy wanted the coincidences, so he would have an opportunity to confess, despite what his conscious mind told him. Tim would have said that Sandy needed to tell Annie and his children what had happened much more than they needed to hear it. Tim was no doubt right and Sandy had every intention of telling them. He’d told Carolyn, a stranger almost, and she had not turned against him. He had felt less alone afterwards.

  He would say something to Emily and Matthew. But not just yet. Not here. Not now. He had to think it through, let the matter settle.

  Chapter 45

  Matthew announced he was going up to the retreat centre to do a three-day meditation course.

  ‘I think it would do me good, clear my head,’ he told them after breakfast one morning. ‘Want to come, Sandy?’

  ‘Maybe next time,’ Sandy replied. The idea of sitting in silence for seventy-two hours was not appealing. He didn’t know what to think, what to feel, after his outburst on the mountain. The others had explained away his tears and proclamations of apology by delayed jetlag and culture shock. Emily suggested it might be a possible religious awakening.

  They could think what they liked. Apart from the black hole of himself, everything was beginning to work. The three of them were able to fall into contented silences as they walked through the town, or wandered through the markets. He saw the easy love that existed between Emily and Matthew, how they accepted and supported each other. It pleased him, but also made him feel lonely. He’d never had a sibling. There had only been a series of miscarriages followed by a bleak period when his mother stared out the kitchen window for hours on end. He missed what might have been.

  He missed Penny too, the way she had believed in him and tried to make him a better person. It was one of the reasons he’d fallen in love with her. And, he realised now, one of the reasons he’d fallen out of love with her. She hadn’t fixed him. He wasn’t a better person. But why had he expected her to do what he couldn’t be bothered to do himself? He bought some fruit from the stall favoured by Emily, the one run by the old woman, and devoured a banana before starting on an apple.

  ‘We’ve just finished breakfast,’ said Matthew.

  ‘I know,’ said Sandy, ‘but I’m hungry all the time. It’s like someone flicked the craving switch from booze to food. I wake up hungry and I go to bed hungry. Talking of which, do you have to fast on the course?’

  Matthew shook his head. ‘But there’s no drinking or smoking, of course.’

  ‘Are you still smoking, Dad?’ asked Emily.

  Sandy smiled. ‘Not in front of you.’

  Emily wagged her finger at Sandy then flung her arm around Matthew’s shoulder. ‘You won’t know yourself at the end of it, little bro,’ she said, flinging her arm around his shoulder. ‘And best of all, it’s just the beginning. Dad and I could get the bus up and meet you there. We could show him around, go for a bit of a hike?’

  Sandy’s calf muscles were already protesting but he nodded his agreement. For the next two days, Emily spent most of her time at the ashram. Sandy was content to meander around the town and take long naps in the afternoon. The evening before they left to see Matthew, Sandy idled through the line of stalls near the temple, trying to find something to read until he met Emily for supper. But there was nothing except outdated tourist guides and a thriller he’d already read, so he walked over to join a small crowd of tourists waiting outside the temple. He recognised the white-robed woman he’d seen in the café. There was a small sign, hard to read, advertising a lecture scheduled to start any minute. It was called: ‘Rosheme’s Guide to Heavenly Enlightenment’.

  I’ll go in, he said to himself. It won’t be Rosheme himself because he’s off inhaling essence of spiritual enlightenment. But I’ll go in and I’ll listen to what they have to say. At least I can talk to Emily about it, even if it’s only to disagree. After so many decades of doubt and ambivalence, he was uncomfortable around Emily’s religiosity. Her beliefs made him feel shallow and sometimes, although he was ashamed to admit it, Sandy was irritated by her certainty.

  A skeletal boy with a shaved head pushed open the tall wooden doors and the little group took off their shoes and placed them in neat rows before shuffling inside. Sandy stowed his sandals in a corner, then sat on the floor on one side of the temple. Faded posters of a rotund beaming figure were taped onto the walls. Dead flies were stuck on the tape and the posters’ corners were curling upwards. There was a smell of earth and sweat, of unwashed bodies.

  The temple was half full. Some seemed to be curious onlookers, like Sandy. Others sat with their eyes closed and their hands clasped in spiritual reverie as they waited for the teaching to begin.

  From behind, there was a brushing noise, as if someone was sweeping the floor. Sandy turned to see a plump middle-aged Indian woman kneel down and prostrate herself, her hands stretched in front of her. Then she drew her knees under her body and sprang to her feet, flinging her arms above her head before kneeling again and lying prone on the floor. In this kind o
f demented jack-in-the-box fashion, she made her way to the front of the temple, where she crossed her legs in the lotus position, sat upright and smoothed her hair. She looked only a bit younger than him and she wasn’t even out of breath. Last time he’d tried to touch his toes, Sandy was giddy from the effort and had to sit down.

  Everyone waited patiently. A door banged loudly and the skinny boy who had opened the temple doors rushed in, set down a bottle of water and rushed out. Minutes later, he ran in again, carrying a velvet cushion and an old-fashioned feather duster. He flicked the dais with it. Dust rose in a cloud and slowly settled. He ran out. Everyone waited.

  Sandy began composing an anecdote in his head. He saw himself back in London, at lunch with Peter and Tim, making them laugh with his amusing description of the old woman and the young boy, and everyone sitting barefoot in the temple waiting for enlightenment that was running late.

  His buttocks ached from sitting on the floor. There was no room to flex his stiff knees. His neck hurt. Just as he thought he couldn’t tolerate any more discomfort, there was a rush of air behind him and a skinny, cross-looking lama strode up to the dais and sat down on the cushion. At first he was silent, content to stare through his black-framed spectacles at his audience. Everyone gazed back in a reverent trance. The lama rearranged his robes and shut his eyes. He appeared to have gone to sleep. The young boy reappeared from the side and moved the bottle of water closer to the dais.

  The lama jerked. His eyes opened and he looked startled, as if he hadn’t seen any of them when he entered. He grinned, began to giggle, then laugh. He laughed so much that his knees shook. His head jerked backwards and forwards. He opened his mouth so wide that Sandy could see the glint of gold fillings, even from where he was sitting. The lama guffawed. He chortled. He giggled. He would not stop.