‘Why?’
‘Because once you’ve done it, you feel so… .’
‘How?’
‘You just feel like a person. You feel like you’ve earned positive karma. You feel as if you’ve cleansed away all the horrible privileges that you were born with, and you’re stripped down to just a simple girl, scrubbing the back of a filthy, scabby, dying leper. It’s absolutely exhilarating.’
‘Oh, I must do it,’ said Liz. ‘I really must.’
‘But isn’t it, like, depressing?’
‘Oh no! Quite the opposite. The place is awash with optimism.’
‘But I thought you said they were all incurable.’
‘They are, but they’re all so charming. I mean, they’ve got nothing left, and they’ve usually been rejected by their families, and they’re about to die, but they can all still laugh and be positive about life.’
‘Yeah, right.’
‘It’s true.’
‘That’s not possible.’
‘It’s true. You see, there’s an interview policy. The hospice is massively oversubscribed, and to get a bed there you have to pass an interview to prove that you’ve got the right attitude.’
‘Which is what?’
‘Positive. You have to be positive. I mean, if they were just sulking all the time, the girls who went would be miserable and wouldn’t learn anything.’
‘Are you saying that the patients are selected to suit the nurses?’
‘All hospitals are like that. I mean, if you don’t have the right disease, you can’t get in. If you aren’t ill enough, you can’t get in. This is just taking it one step further. And I tell you, they get better treatment there than they would for miles around. That’s why the atmosphere is so good. It’s simply a marvellous place.’
‘That’s sick.’
‘What – you think it would be better if they didn’t get any treatment at all?’
‘No, but I mean, selecting patients like that…’
‘You have to be selective. I mean, there are lepers growing on trees in this country.’
‘Yes, but…’
‘Actually, between you and me, the government education programme is beginning to have an effect, and the supply’s been drying up a bit lately.’
At that point, Caroline joined us.
‘Hi-eey,’ she sung.
‘Hi-eey,’ sung Fiona in return. ‘Feeling better?’
‘A bit.’
‘Did you just do another one?’
‘Another three.’
‘Oh God. It’s getting worse, isn’t it?’
‘Mmm.’
‘Don’t you think it might be time to try a doctor?’
‘I thought we agreed that we don’t believe in doctors.’
‘Maybe we can find a homeopathic one.’
‘If you think so…’
‘Are you ill?’ said Liz, radiating concern.
‘Yeah, I can’t stop going to the loo, and I’ve lost a stone and a half.’
‘You’ve lost a stone and a half ?’ said Liz.
‘Yeah.’
‘Oh, you lucky thing.’
‘I know, but I’m beginning to get a bit worried now because I keep on fainting.’
‘How come you don’t believe in doctors when you’ve just been working in a hospital?’ I said.
‘It wasn’t a hospital, it was a hospice,’ said Fiona. ‘And it had healers instead of doctors.’
‘What’s the difference?’
‘Doctors cure the disease. Healers heal the person.’
‘Who do you go to for the shits?’
Liz gave me a despairing look.
The arrival of Fee and Caz heralded the beginning of the end. Liz started getting up every morning before breakfast to go and meditate by the lake with them, and under their influence, she started turning into a cross between Princess Anne, Mother Teresa, Gandhi and Russell Grant.
Meanwhile, Ranj seemed to be going off the rails. It all began to go wrong when he bought a chillum, which is basically a cross between a pipe and a traffic cone, designed for smoking vast quantities of hash. One chillum could probably keep the entire population of Barnet stoned for a week. Ranj, however, acquired the unusual habit of smoking an entire chillum on his own. For breakfast. Then another one for lunch.
Normally, it was impossible to get more than two puffs into a joint before some unknown scrounger would come and sit next to you and start a feeble attempt at a conversation in anticipation of a few drags. Ranj’s chillum, however, was so fearsome that it actually frightened people away. A busy courtyard of travellers could be almost cleared by the sight of a strangely boggle-eyed Indian sucking on one end of what looked like an industrial cooling tower having a bad day. The smoke it produced often appeared to be heavier than air, and most of the time Ranj sat contentedly in a puddle of fumes, rolling his eyes, swearing at imaginary members of his family and occasionally passing out.
Now I’m all in favour of drug abuse, but by this stage Ranj just wasn’t good company any more. He wasn’t company at all. As a result, most of my time in Pushkar was spent alone with Wilbur Smith.
Jeremy, meanwhile, had been ousted from the royal entourage by Fee and Caz. He didn’t seem to mind too much, though, and I almost thought I detected a certain relief that he was now being left alone by Liz. Whenever I saw him he was alone in the courtyard, reading a book called by Carlos Castaneda.
Feeling briefly sympathetic towards him as a fellow cast-off, I asked him what it was about.
‘It’s a must-read,’ he said, in that pompous voice I’d almost forgotten.
Bye-bye sympathy.
‘Here – read the back,’ he said.
‘ “ projects a quality of experience beside which scientific exactitude stands in peril of paling into insignificance. – Theodore Roszak,” ’ it said.
‘Blimey. Sounds good.’
‘I’ll swap it for your Wilbur Smith when you’ve finished,’ he said.
‘All right.’
One morning, I was tucking into a banana pancake when Liz, Fee and Caz, just back from their dawn seance or whatever it was they did, came and joined me for breakfast (one boiled egg each, in case you’re interested).
Despite the fact that I would far rather have been left alone with Wilbur, they seemed to think that the courteous thing to do was to come and sit at my table, disturb my peace and talk unadulterated shit to each other without addressing a word to me.
I tried to blot them out and concentrate on the bananariness of my pancake, but the invasion was just too brutal.
‘Did you get there today?’ said Fee.
‘What – to nirvana? Are you crazy?’ said Liz.
‘No – not nirvana. To the other one. The one below nirvana but above tranquillity that I was telling you about. What’s it called again?’
‘Thingummy,’ said Caz.
‘That’s the one.’
‘I definitely got to tranquillity,’ said Liz.
‘Brilliant,’ said Fee. ‘I mean, that’s the basis. You’re well on the way now.’
‘I think it’s the first time I properly got there, actually.’
‘Oh, I’m so happy for you. How did it feel?’
‘It felt… um… kind of…’
‘Tranquil?’ I offered.
No response.
‘… as if… as if my body belonged to someone else, and I was just a guest in my own head, observing the world and myself from a height.’
‘That’s amazing,’ said Caz. ‘That’s more than tranquillity. I think that’s the next one up. I hardly ever get the from-a-height thing.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah. You’re doing really well.’
Liz sighed.
‘I am soooo glad I bumped into you two,’ she said, touching each of them on the leg. ‘You’ve opened my eyes to… to… to the WORLD!’
Oh Christ, I thought. She really has lost it now.