'You promise?'
'I promise, Suvinder.'
'Kathryn. May I kiss your cheek?'
'Oh, for goodness sake.'
He kissed my cheek. I hugged him, briefly. He nodded and looked bashful. Langtuhn Hemblu and B. K. Bousande looked in different directions, smiling. I saw a way out of our mutual embarrassment and went over to where my little pointy-hatted friends had appeared. I squatted down to say hi. Dulsung wasn't there, but Graumo, Pokuhm and their pals shook both my hands and patted my cheeks with sticky fingers. I tried to ask why Dulsung wasn't there, and they tried to tell me, miming something that seemed to involve lots of twirling and fiddly work.
I distributed the gifts I'd bought earlier. I gave Graumo two presents and tried to make it clear that one of them was for Dulsung, but he looked suspiciously surprised and delighted and promptly disappeared. I hailed Langtuhn, who came over with a big bag of boring but useful stuff like pencils, erasers, notebooks, dynamo flashlights and so on. We presented this to the children, getting them to promise to share it all out.
We'd just finished doing this, and I'd given away the last of the presents, when Dulsung appeared, breathless and smiling broadly. She offered me a little home-made wire-and-silk flower.
I squatted down so our faces were level, accepted it from her and attached the new flower securely to my jacket.
I looked round for Graumo but there was no sign of him. I had nothing to present to Dulsung: I'd given everything away. I checked my pockets for a gift I might have missed. Only one lump remained in any of the jacket's pockets. The little monkey. That was all I had left: my tiny dour-faced netsuke piece.
I pulled it out of my pocket, held it in my fingers for a moment, then offered it to her. Dulsung nodded, then accepted it with both hands. Her face split into a huge smile and she reached up with both arms. Still squatting, I hugged her. The little monkey was in her right fist; I could feel its chunky hardness against the back of my head.
Then it was time to go, and so I went.
I left as I'd arrived, just me and the guys up front in the plane. Once the ground had dropped away — along with my stomach — I looked back to see the people I'd left, but by the time we turned after take-off all there was to see was the inside of a big black cloud full of jack-hammer turbulence and glimpses of swirling snow.
The flight was horrific. We got there; we got to Siliguri, but it was pretty damn frightful. One of those flights where you contemplate death and terror so closely that no matter what happens, even if — when — you arrive safely, the you that got on the plane really hasn't survived after all; the you that gets off is different.
I'd given away my little netsuke monkey. What had I been thinking of? Ah, well, never mind. It had seemed like the right thing to do. It still did. Anyway, it was my own fault for almost leaving it in the bedroom; otherwise it would never have been in my pocket in the first place. A superstitious person would have thought that somehow the little carving had wanted to stay in Thulahn. A Freudian…well, never mind what a Freudian would have thought. Luce had asked me once was I a Freudian? I'd told her no, I was a Schadenfreudian.
During one of the wilder bits of the flight, I found myself touching and stroking the little flower in my lapel. My hand was on the brink of jerking away again as my brain thought, Hello, is this some sort of rosary scene going on here? I looked down at my hand as though it belonged to somebody else. Then I thought, No, this is just a childish thing. Comfort, not superstition.
Same difference, I thought.
Of course, a really superstitious person would have thought that the monkey supernaturally knew that the plane was going to crash in the mountains and had made sure it was safely on terra firma at the time in the hands of a new owner.
The plane dropped sickeningly and hit another seemingly solid wall of air. I grabbed the flimsy seat arms with both hands. Yeah, very fucking comforting, I thought.
Gulfstream all the way. Siliguri to Leeds-Bradford just like that, in a tad over eight hours; would have been less but for head winds. I'd assumed we'd have to touch down somewhere to refuel, but no. The plane's seats were big and broad and leather in a cabin gleaming with mahogany; there was a rest room with gold and marble fittings, up front there was a no-nonsense flight crew and back with me a welcoming but unfussy stewardess who served hot and cold food and drinks that would have earned a Michelin star back on the ground, plus there were today's papers, this month's magazines — some of them women's magazines, hot diggety — and every TV channel under the sun and over the horizon. I got myself a serious news fix. Oh, and the flight was blissfully smooth.
I changed from Thuhn haute couture to a smartly corporate blouse, pinstripe skirt and jacket, and shoes more suitable for hospital visits in Europe in winter. Dulsung's little artificial flower went in an inside pocket. Contemplating myself in the generously sized and perfectly lit mirror above the deep marble basin, my avaricious side — stunned into shocked silence, like most of the rest of me, by the traumatic transition from Thuhn to Siliguri — woke up briefly to look round the plane and say, I want one! While a side I didn't even know I had reared its curious head and with a shake of it said, How sickeningly ostentatious and wasteful. But then both these disputing demispheres fell promptly asleep as soon as I settled my occasionally fondled but assuredly never abused butt into my seat.
I awoke over the North Sea looking down at the flares of oil and gas rigs, the seat fully reclined and a cashmere stole wrapped over my legs. The aircraft and the air roared and shushed around me.
I yawned and made my way past the smiling stewardess — I nodded and said, 'Thanks' — to the rest room to tidy my hair and apply some make-up.
A frustrating delay waiting for a customs official to turn up at Leeds-Bradford, then a smooth journey in a chauffeused Merc — rear seat unforgivingly hard — to the hospital. The air smelled strange and felt thick. Somehow I hadn't noticed this back at Siliguri but I noticed it now.
It was pretty late by then. I'd let Marion Craston know I was on my way as soon as we'd hit cruising altitude out of Siliguri and she'd told the medics, but whether I got to see Uncle Freddy or not depended on how he was. When I got to the ICU they asked me to turn my mobile phone off. I was allowed to set eyes on Uncle F — tiny, skin yellow-white, head bandaged, almost invisible from some angles because of all the machinery and wires and tubes and stuff — then had to tiptoe away, because he was asleep at last, for the first time, for any length of time, since he'd arrived here. He'd been told I was on my way; maybe he felt able to sleep now. I felt touched and flattered and worried all at once.
Marion Craston and the mysterious geriatric floozy from Scarborough were nowhere to be seen, having retreated back to their respective hotels. I asked if there was any point my staying through the night. I felt well enough rested from my extended snooze on the Gulfstream to handle one of these all-night bedside vigil things, but the medical staff said no; better to come back in the morning. They seemed marginally more sanguine about Freddy's chances than they'd sounded before. I stayed half an hour, just to make sure he really was safely asleep, then left. I still worried, and let myself out of the hospital with a feeling of hopelessness and dread, half certain that, after all, he'd die in his sleep during the night and I never would get to talk to him.
Mercedes to Blysecrag. A red-eyed Miss Heggies, very obviously keeping control of herself. The house felt terribly empty. It should have felt cold, too, and probably would have if I'd come from anywhere other than Thulahn. Instead it felt warm, but still empty and desolate.