Before long, she lost interest and started telling me about everything that had happened at home since I left, none of which seemed to amount to anything. As far as I could tell, everything was exactly the same as before, and yet her version of the last three months took up almost as much time as mine. Watching her jabber away, I was amazed that she could talk at such length without it dawning on her how boring she was.
The steak, which was stunningly delicious, gave me stomach cramps. I hadn’t tried to digest anything that solid for months – in fact, my dog-burger was probably the only meal I’d eaten in India that had required any chewing.
I put a thumb in my mouth and did a quick check to see if my teeth were all still properly attached, then went for a stroll to try and walk off the stomach pain. The weather was simply gorgeous – a grey sky, with scudding clouds blotting out the sun, and a deliciously chilly wind that gave me goose-bumps on my arms. It was such a joy to be cold – to feel the crisp air in my throat and chest, with the wind stinging my cheeks, and my nose turning red. I stood still and took my first proper lungful of English air. Aahhh!
Trudging through the soggy grass of my local park, I was struck by the incredible greenness of everything. I’d become used to lurid food and brown landscapes, but suddenly everything was the other way round. Again, it all looked slightly unconvincing. Nothing felt quite real. I started touching and squeezing things for extra confirmation of their existence – plucking strands of grass, stroking a wet bench and twanging leaves from their branches.
On the way home from the park, I popped into my local corner shop for a bar of proper, real, English Dairy Milk chocolate. (You can get a version of the same thing in India, with the same wrapper, but it has the texture of pastry.) I had the usual ‘All right, mate, how’s things, Arsenal aren’t looking too good’ conversation with the guy behind the counter, then found myself asking him where he was from.
He gave me a weird look.
‘I’ve just been in India,’ I explained. ‘That’s why you haven’t seen me for a while.’
‘Oh, right!’ he said, smiling broadly. In fifteen years of using his shop I realized that I’d never particularly seen him smile before. ‘Gujarat,’ he said. ‘Originally my family’s from Gujarat.’
‘Cool. I only passed through Gujarat. What’s it like?’
‘Ah – very beautiful. The most beautiful place in the world. You shouldn’t ask me, though, I’m biased.’
‘When d’you come here, then?’
‘I was fourteen.’
‘Fourteen!’
‘Yeah. I go back once each year. To see my family.’
‘Right.’
‘Where did you visit, then?’
‘Oh, I flew to Delhi, then I went up to Himachal Pradesh…’
‘Aah – Himachal Pradesh is beautiful.’
‘Amazing. That bit was incredible. Then I went across to Rajasthan, down to Goa…’
‘By plane?’
‘Train and bus, mainly.’
‘You went from Rajasthan to Goa without flying? Are you crazy?’
‘I didn’t really know how far it was. I kind of regretted it, actually. Then I went down to Bangalore and on to Kerala.’
‘I’ve never visited the south. One day, maybe – but with work and children…’
‘It’s tough.’
‘Mmm.’
‘You should go. It’s beautiful.’
‘So I’ve been told.’
‘It really is amazing.’
‘Will you ever go back?’ he said.
‘Me?’
‘Yes.’
‘God – I haven’t really thought about it. You know – it’s hard work travelling there. It’s not exactly relaxing. But… maybe in a few years… if I get another chance. Yeah, I wouldn’t mind going back.’
Our conversation tailed away, and I wandered outside feeling oddly perturbed that I was already saying I wanted to go back to India. After only a few hours in England, all the unpleasant parts of my trip were tumbling from my memory. Rationally, I could still just about weigh things up and remember that for the majority of the time I’d been miserable, but I felt so happy that I’d done it, and had survived, that my positive emotions were already beginning to swamp everything else. In my mind, the trip was turning itself into an amorphous . I was becoming incapable of reconciling the pleasure of having done it with the misery of doing it, and the feeling of pleasure was so immediate, and so powerful, that it swept away all rival emotions. I couldn’t remember what the agonizing bus journeys had felt like – I couldn’t revisit the sensation of having that brutally hard seat slap my bruised arse and throw me on to the floor, but I remember what I’d seen out of the window and how the first glimpse of the mountains had made my heart surge.
All my contradictory feelings were passing through a filter which was picking out anything unpleasant or painful. I could already sense that I was going to end up with clear, uncomplicated, positive memories. My journey round India was already reducing itself into just another person’s ‘amazing experience’.
I’d been home for a couple of days when I got a phone call from James. There was such a lot to say and, more importantly, such a lot to avoid saying, that I kept our phone conversation short and arranged to meet up in a pub later. I didn’t mention Liz, and hoped she wouldn’t come, but I noticed him using the word ‘we’ where he ought to have been saying ‘I’, which I took as an ominous sign.
That evening, both of them turned up at the pub together, arm in arm. My heart sank. I had no idea what she had told him about our trip, and how much I would be able to say without contradicting her.
James was significantly skinnier than I remembered him, and his neat hair had been transformed into a straggly mop which dangled in blonde waves on either side of his now tuftily bearded face. He was wearing sandals, jeans and a stretched, misshapen T-shirt. He used to look like Richard Clayderman as school prefect, but now he was Jesus-with-a-hangover as student-union rep.
Liz was wearing a short skirt and a body-hugging top that made my balls gurgle. The sari and the red spot had vanished.
As soon as James saw me, he screamed my name across the whole length, of the pub, then bounded over and gave me a hug. This was rather intimidating, since it meant that either he still didn’t know what had happened, or he knew everything, and was biding his time before he planted a knife in my back. Liz smiled and gave me a peck on the cheek. There was no trace of India left in her body language.
With James at the bar queuing for drinks, the atmosphere instantly thickened. Liz stared at me blankly, giving nothing away, while I stared at her, trying to guess what on earth she could be thinking.
‘You ditched the sari, then?’ I said, eventually.
‘What’s it to you?’
I shrugged.
‘Have you told him?’ I said.
‘Told him
‘About us.’
‘There’s nothing to tell.’
‘Right. Silly me.’
‘I just said that we went, had fun and came back.’
‘You didn’t even tell him that we separated?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I don’t want to have to lie to him, so I told him about the trip without really mentioning you.’
‘You lied to him because you don’t want to have to lie to him.’
‘Oh, God. Here we go again. Dave and his tedious games.’
‘Don’t start, Liz. I’d just like to know what I can and can’t say.’