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‘Oo,’ said Cindy, dancing in a little circle.

  ‘So where’s the venue?’ said Martina, holding her hand to the light and squinting at it.

  ‘Good question,’ said Mike. ‘Now, I’ve mentioned about the you know, Shri Malek Bister Pushkara Entertainment… Thing, okay? I’ve not been there yet but I can tell you this: we’re talking state-of-the-art. The words “High” and “Spec” don’t even cover it.’

  ‘I’m down a few cables,’ said Hendrix.

  ‘They’ll have cables,’ Mike smiled. ‘Like I said, chill.’

  ‘When can we see it?’ said Martina.

  ‘You’ll see it. Don’t worry,’ said Mike.

  ‘This morning,’ said Martina. ‘With you.’

  Mike nibbled on his lip for a moment. ‘Yeah, okay,’ he said.

  ‘Me too,’ said Cindy. ‘With my little brown nut.’ Pol gasped slightly as she pinched his bottom.

  ‘Fine,’ said Mike. ‘We’ll all go. Okay? Everyone happy?’

  ‘How do we get there?’ asked Martina.

  ‘Malek’s just sorting the limo.’

  ‘It’s got cabinets, right?’ said Hendrix anxiously.

  ‘You name it,’ said Mike. ‘In the meantime, there’s a bit of merchandising gone AWOL I need to check out.’

  ‘What do you mean AWOL?’ said Martina.

  ‘It is a military expression,’ I explained, ‘meaning, “To have developed an unexplained absence without the appropriate foliage”.’

  ‘Calendars,’ said Mike, glancing at me briefly. ‘But we got a few left. So no worries. Alright?’

  ‘I want to go for a walk,’ said Cindy. ‘When can we go for a walk? Please, please, please can we go walkies?’

  ‘You’ll get your walk,’ said Mike, moving off. ‘I’ll sort security, press, itinerary, cetera cetera. Just don’t scratch your legs, okay, on like bushes and stuff.’ He turned at the door to smile at everyone. I felt obliged to return a particularly amiable grin since nobody else smiled back. He looked at me again for a moment, and left.

  ‘The hills above the village are most conducive to “walkies”,’ I said to Cindy. ‘Not to mention family picnics, audiences with holy men and the performance of sacrifice.’

  Pol coughed a little and glared at me.

  ‘Holy men!’ said Cindy. ‘I just love holy men, with their fierce little eyes and spindly legs. I want to see a holy man. I want want to see holy man!’

  ‘There are none to be found at this time,’ I said. ‘But soon, I am sure, one shall appear through the morning mist of the mountain pass offering wisdom and asking for directions.’

  ‘Well, maybe after lunch,’ said Martina. ‘It might be nice to get out a bit.’

  ‘What did Mike say?’ said Sharon, lighting another cigarette, ‘about travel and that? Exotic climes? See the world? Yeah? And what? What have we seen? Hotels, hotels and ah, what was it? Oh yeah, more sodding hotels.’

  ‘A bus?’ said Cindy. ‘I’ll never forget that bus.’

  There was a little pause as all three of them never forgot the bus.

  ‘I blame the restaurants,’ said Sharon. ‘’Specially in Leicester. Flipping great pictures of shiny white palaces, blue sky, pink flowers. Little man comes over, brushing the crumbs up. Oops there’s a crumb, we can’t have that. That isn’t like home. We don’t have crumbs lying around. Just mangy dogs all over the street, heaps of garbage, cows every bloody where and total head-case drivers trying to kill you. But you won’t see crumbs. Cause all the bloody beggars have eaten them up! That hotel, yeah? wherever it was, I go for a stroll, out jumps a monkey. I run for my bloody life, ants this big, fricking mosquitoes, like my leg’s got acne.’ She took a breath. ‘Tandoori sodding Paradise!’ she said finally, leaning back again.

  ‘Yeah, but they love us,’ said Martina, dryly, glancing at Cindy.

  ‘They love me in Hamburg,’ said Sharon. ‘They love me in Hammersmith. I don’t need the squits to be loved. I don’t need to get eaten alive by a million crawly things to be loved. I don’t need to get woken up at four in the bloody morning by some lunatic shouting down a megaphone…’

  ‘That’s the call to prayer,’ interrupted Cindy. ‘It’s spiritual.’

  ‘Well, you go pray, then,’ said Sharon. ‘While I shove the megaphone up his –’

  ‘Okay, okay, girls, right, yeah, okay. We’re all a bit you know,’ said Hendrix, closing the box and straightening up. ‘But that’s how it is, alright, that’s where we are in the end and… well, you know.’

  ‘What?’ said Sharon.

  ‘Well, whatever. It is what it is. I lost half me cables, you don’t hear me complaining.’

  ‘That wasn’t you, then?’ said Sharon.

  He grimaced slightly, smoothing his pony-tail with a hairy hand. ‘So you’re the Doc around here?’ he said.

  I glanced at Pol who looked as if he was about to say something.

  ‘Why do you ask?’ I said quickly.

  ‘Well, only cause, ah, I mean, if there’s any chance of a word some time…’ said Hendrix, eyes darting at everything except Sharon who seemed to be staring fixedly at him.

  ‘I shall be in the clinic tomorrow,’ I said.

  ‘Well, by “some time”, I was thinking more like now,’ said Hendrix,

  Pol grabbed my arm. ‘Perhaps I could have a word, first,’ he said, dragging me into the corridor. ‘What are you doing?’ he hissed.

  ‘It’s not what I’m doing,’ I said. ‘It’s what I’m not doing.’

  ‘You mean not telling them who you really are?’

  ‘Possibly similar to that,’ I said. ‘But don’t worry. I have no intention of deceiving them. I will merely offer such advice as I can and if I can’t, I’ll refer them to Dev. That is precisely how we function on a daily basis. There is nothing unusual or untoward in this.’

  ‘You think she won’t marry you if she finds out you’re a Clinic Skivvy,’ he said.

  ‘Clinical Assistant,’ I mumbled.

  ‘Then what faith do you have in her?’ he asked.

  ‘Infinite. Except for that.’

  Hendrix came to the door. ‘Only, I do get a bit of medication from time to time,’ he said. ‘All above board. You know. Bit of this. Bit of that. I was just wondering what you could, maybe, do for me.’

  ‘Rabindra!’ said Pol, shaking my shoulders.

  ‘Please excuse my friend,’ I said, trying to pull free. ‘He is a little over-excited. But if you tell me the nature of your concern, I’m sure I can find the appropriate remedy.’

  Pol moved off to clutch his head.

  Hendrix leaned in close. ‘Concern, you see, that’s just it. Lots, in fact. And they, well, they concern me. I guess that’s the thing about concerns. So maybe, you know, if you’ve got something just to tweak ’em down a bit…?’

  ‘Perhaps it would help,’ I said, wishing I’d brought my book, ‘if you could tell me the precise name of the medication you’re receiving…?’

  ‘Prozac,’ he said. ‘That’s good. Takes the edge off. I don’t know if you do that. I mean, Mike’s sorting a little weed for later but I lost my cables so I’m a bit… you know.’

  ‘You have fish phobia?’

  ‘Ah, no,’ said Hendrix frowning. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘But this Prozac,’ I said, ‘was designed specifically as a remedy for fish phobia.’

  ‘Right,’ said Hendrix. ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘I do have some but it is reserved for this condition only. We had a patient once, brought in by his wife. He wouldn’t eat fish, however she cooked it. Fried, boiled, she tried everything. Being a lady whose ancestors came from the coast, cooking fish was among her greatest pleasures. In fact that’s all she could cook. So this was very problematic for them. She even consulted my father over legal proceedings again
st her husband’s family for not mentioning this impediment to their matrimonial compatibility. They said they’d counter-sue on the grounds of failure to reveal her culinary limitations.’

  ‘Tricky,’ said Hendrix.

  ‘When I asked my brother…’

  ‘Who?’ said Hendrix.

  ‘He is also versed in clinical matters,’ I said, glancing round to see if Pol was listening.

  ‘’kay,’ said Hendrix.

  ‘He said it sounded like a classic case of fish phobia.’

  ‘Sounds right to me,’ said Hendrix, nodding thoughtfully.

  ‘For which there is no cure.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Hendrix. ‘That’s a shame.’

  ‘However, when I mentioned it to the Pharmaceutical Representative a few months later, he said that new research had achieved a major break-through for this very condition.’

  ‘Prozac?’ said Hendrix.

  ‘The wonders of medical science,’ I said, smiling.

  ‘Well, that’s exactly it,’ said Hendrix. ‘You know the last time I saw a fish I completely freaked.’

  ‘I think we are beginning to narrow the possibilities,’ I said.

  ‘And the nightmares,’ he said. ‘Like, swarms of fish and… fish-type things all… swarming. I wake up sweating. You can ask Shal. I mean even the word, you know, “fish” brings me out, like, take a look at my forehead…’

  ‘It appears that you are perspiring,’ I said.

  ‘Cause we’re talking about fish,’ he said.

  ‘In that case,’ I said, ‘I have no hesitation in prescribing you the necessary medication.’

  ‘You’re a brick,’ he said, patting my arm. ‘Soon as you can, hey?’

  ‘I’ll pop over to the clinic today,’ I said.

  ‘Champion,’ he smiled, turning back to the room. ‘That patient,’ he said, stopping by the door. ‘he’s okay now, is he?’

  ‘Much happier,’ I said. ‘In fact he now eats anything his wife puts in front of him, though his mango business isn’t doing so well.’

  ‘Well, I guess that’s… that’s something,’ said Hendrix sauntering back to his box.

  Pol rushed over, flinging his hands about. ‘Are you mad?’ he said. ‘What’s she going to say when she finds out? Rabindra! Think about it! What are you doing?’

  But Cindy was calling him now. ‘Pol? Pol? Where’s my little nut-brown buddy?’

  ‘I believe your wife is looking for you,’ I said.

  Pol glared at me for a moment and went back to the lounge. I could hear him gasp as she squeezed him.

  ‘My little pecan pie,’ she said, ‘if you keep running off, I shall have to tie you up. Now, that’s a thought!’

  I felt happy for Pol though the rebuke in his look continued to sting. It seemed to me that his dream was assured in spite of its metaphysical conundrums. For me it was different. The truth was that Martina had yet to give any real indication that she wanted to pinch my bottom. In fact, she had a tendency to yawn when I spoke to her which, try as I might, was hard to construe as infatuation. So, why had it all gone so right for Pol and so not right for me? The answer was obvious. Because I had lied to her. If love is the dissolution of barriers, what greater barrier could there be between two people than a conscious falsehood? In spite of my protestations to Pol, I had done more than merely fail to apprise her of my true position when I declined to wear my white coat with its name badge upon which were printed in stark letters: ‘R.Sharma. Clinical Assistant’. And even if she couldn’t know the depths to which my deception had plunged, she would have sensed, surely, that something was amiss. It was beginning to strike me that not only were my nuptial prospects in peril but also, if you believe in such things, my innermost soul. For what is karma but rough justice for the wicked? Had I been wicked? Yes. Was I about to face justice? As I crept back through the window to fetch Hendrix’s medication, it seemed to me that the gods were, ultimately, unfathomable. They give. They take. They give while somehow making it feel like they’ve taken something and, of course, vice versa. Most of the village was now clamouring at the doors of the Hotel Nirvana. What were they hoping to get? And what, in the process would they lose? I decided to let Pol deal with the philosophical dilemmas. Right now I had to concentrate on winning the heart of my beloved. It was not, I thought as I picked up speed to lose a couple of dogs who had started to follow me, looking good.

  4

  ‘I just love this bit,’ giggled Cindy, clapping her hands.

  We had gathered in the lobby where Mrs Dong was nailing a notice over the reception desk headed, ‘Rools!’ Item One of which was, ‘No Loitering’, problematic, I thought, in an area designed principally for that purpose. Item Two was, ‘No argue bout Rates!’ Item Three was, ‘No argue bout Rools’, and so on. She had somehow persuaded Pol to hold it up while she hammered.

  All the ladies, meanwhile, had changed. Martina was in knee-length cream shorts and a pale pink blouse. Cindy, whose fiery hair now tumbled playfully over her shoulders, wore a tight black dress that flowed in a single piece from her neck to her calves. Sharon, meanwhile, had a pair of faded jeans, long tan boots and a blue t-shirt stencilled with the words, ‘Go Ahead Punk, Make My Day’. Mike had remained in his crumpled suit and was looking, as ever, overheated.

  Cindy peeked through the shutters. ‘Are the press here?’ she said, excitedly. ‘What about TV? I don’t know, do they have TV? Is it autographs or straight to limo? Marty?’

  Hendrix had snatched the medicine a little too hastily and was now chasing its contents across the floor. I was still out of breath from my sprint, though the journey had been relatively uneventful. The dogs who chased me had thudded against the clinic door as I slammed it behind me, whining and scratching as I headed for my office.

  From Dev’s room, I could hear Father shouting, ‘Research, I’ll give you research. Sit up when I’m talking to you.’ However generous the offer to assist with Dev’s work, Father had evidently failed to appreciate how prolonged study causes one’s head to rest on the desk.

  It took me a while to find the remedy for Hendrix’s fish-phobia since I’d forgotten what colour the box was. Still, I thought it would give the dogs time to get bored and go away. In the event, they had merely camped in the shade opposite, leaping up when I reappeared. But I was ready for them, scattering Imodium pellets as I ran down the road, something they always lapped up enthusiastically, though it made them quiet for a few days afterwards.

  Pol was ready to help me through the window, which was just as well since one or two tradespeople had, by now, made their way to the rubble at the back. I thought the mood less festive and a little more earnest than earlier, especially when Mr Briniwal, the upholsterer, rushed towards me brandishing a mallet.

  Mike was in the middle of a speech when we finally reached the lobby. ‘So let us remember,’ he said glancing through the shutters, ‘that we are not merely Entertainers, we are Ambassadors. And as Ambassadors, we bring to this country, to this land, to the good people of… ah, this place, a little touch of England, though, strictly speaking, touch and you’re out, sonny.’ He chortled.

  ‘Can we get on with it?’ said Martina.

  ‘Just waiting for the nod, darling,’ said Mike, glancing out again.

  ‘You must let me know if the symptoms persist,’ I said to Hendrix who was fishing behind a sofa.

  ‘You’re the dude,’ he said.

  ‘Seriously,’ said Mike, ‘a lot of people talk about The Brotherhood of Nations…’

  ‘Like who?’ said Sharon.

  ‘Well, lots of people.’

  ‘Name one,’ said Sharon.

  ‘Just take it from me,’ said Mike, a little sharply, ‘that people do. But how is that to be achieved? Through wars, conquest and exploitation?’

  ‘You mean there’s another way?’ said Sharon playing, I
suspected, the devil’s advocate.

  ‘There is only one thing that can truly forge new bonds, new chains…’

  ‘Now you’re talking!’ said Cindy.

  ‘And that is art. Paintings, music, all that. Stories and legends. For instance, they’ve got this thing about some… whatever, having its head chopped off. And we… well, we’ve got two thousand years of civilisation culminating in the invention of the Calendar.’

  ‘Gregorian?’ said Pol.

  ‘Pirelli,’ said Mike, straightening up. ‘Okay ladies. We’re on.’

  ‘Yippee,’ said Cindy, jumping up and down.

  ‘Got anywhere for this?’ said Sharon, holding out a wrinkled piece of gum.

  ‘Find something,’ said Mike. ‘Brendan? You ready?’

  ‘Huh?’ said Hendrix from under a chaise longue.

  ‘My people,’ said Cindy, waving at the window, ‘I love you all.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Mike gripping the door handle. ‘Keep it loose, nice and relaxed. Marty, that’s beautiful. Shal, maybe a smile.’

  ‘I’m pouting,’ said Sharon.

  ‘Okay, but not too much. They’ll think you’re gonna to throw up.’

  ‘They might be right,’ said Sharon.

  ‘Rock and Roll,’ said Mike thrusting his chin forward, wrenching the doors open and marching out with his hands above his head.

  For a moment the noise hushed to an eery silence. Somebody sniffed. A foot scraped. It seemed to me that I could hear the crowd breathing. Then a hundred voices erupted as one: ‘Saucepans you can see your face in!’ ‘Hand-made shoes in finest leather all styles considered!’ ‘The best samosas in Pushkara, don’t listen to that lying bastard Bister!’

  ‘You have waited a thousand years!’ shouted Mike, arms outstretched.

  ‘Somebody tell him the meaning of OTT,’ muttered Martina.

  ‘Remember when he said we was the best thing to happen here since Queen Victoria put her foot on it?’ said Sharon.

  ‘Lead balloon or what?’ said Cindy primping her curls with brusque fingers.

  ‘But wait no more!’ shouted Mike.

  ‘Yak’s wool hats to keep your head toasty!’ ‘The only Aubergines in Pushkara worth stuffing!’ ‘Don’t listen to her, she gets her produce out of my rejects.’ ‘Shut up.’ ‘No you shut up.’ ‘Your son isn’t worthy of my daughter!’ came the response.