‘I didn’t mean that. I only…’
‘Just go. Chill out.’
‘D’you want to… come with us?’
NO! No – she couldn’t ask that. Not Jeremy. I couldn’t face it.
‘I’d love to,’ he said.
Noooo.
‘But I can’t.’
‘Why not?’ said Liz. ‘I thought you could go where the feeling took you.’
‘Nice one. I just can’t. I’m stuck here, waiting for some money to come through.’
‘Waiting for some money to come through?’ I said.
‘Yeah. I’ve run out.’
‘Where’s it coming from?’ I said.
‘Home.’
‘How come? From who?’
‘Parents.’
I couldn’t stop myself from laughing. That’s the life, I thought. Mummy and daddy cabling you money whenever you ran out.
‘What?’ he said. ‘What’s funny?’
‘Nothing.’
‘What are you laughing at?’
‘You were laughing. I want to know what you were laughing at.’
‘Just… you know.’
‘No, I don’t know.’
‘Just – it’s funny that your parents send you money.’
‘Why?’
‘It just is.’ I smirked. I’d really got under his skin now. ‘I just – you know – took you for someone a bit older, that’s all.’
He stood up, throwing
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Nothing.’
The atmosphere thickened as we stared at each other, neither of us speaking.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I shouldn’t have laughed. I mean – just because I earned the money to come here doesn’t make me any better than you. And it wasn’t really a surprise anyway. I shouldn’t have laughed. It was obvious from when you first opened your mouth that you were a toff. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have laughed.’
He was really pissed off now.
‘I am
‘No – sorry. Wrong word.’
‘And I
‘Right. Exactly. I’m leaping to conclusions.’
‘And I am
‘Sorry. Touchy subject.’
He was twitching with rage.
‘People like you… people… it’s your kind of… of…
‘You’re right. Let’s get to know each other better, shall we? Like – what school did you go to?’
‘I bet you went to private school, too.’
‘Maybe I did, but that doesn’t make me a toff.’
‘I am
Liz showed Jeremy our bus tickets to Simla. He kindly pointed out that seats 52 and 53 were going to be at the back, and that it’s basic knowledge to make sure that you get a seat near the front if you don’t want to have your spine shattered by the bumps in the road. He also mentioned that our tickets said ‘Luxury VT’ on them, which meant that the bus had a video and we would be deafened by Hindi musicals for the entire journey, which, he gleefully added, took at least fourteen hours.
‘How long were you queuing?’ he said.
We both scowled at him.
‘Two hours,’ said Liz.
‘You should have got the hotel to send a boy for you,’ said Jeremy.
‘Do they really do that?’ said Liz.
‘Of course – costs a few rupees, but it saves you a day. Oh well – live and learn.’
More than ever, I wanted to pull out Jeremy’s toenails.
It turned out that the stuff about shattering your spine wasn’t just a turn of phrase. The rear wheels of the bus were roughly half-way down the chassis, turning the back fifteen rows into a pivot which magnified the slightest bump in what was already a staggeringly uneven road. As a result, we travelled in a kind of sadist’s zero-gravity chamber, where you spent half the time floating in mid air and the other half having your arse spanked by the seat.
It was the first time I had got close to a local for any length of time, and it struck me that all the stuff about Indians accepting their fate was true. The guy next to me didn’t even seem to notice how uncomfortable the bus was. Occasionally, if we’d just floated to the ceiling and then been given a triple-whack which was hard enough to send all five of us on to the floor, he would give me an isn’t-this-funny grin, but other than that, he just stared out of the window, seemingly content that he was being simultaneously paralysed and castrated.
The one advantage of being at the back was that you were further away from the Hindi musicals playing at the front of the bus. In the course of the trip, the same film was played four times, and although I could only see the screen when I was in mid air, by the end of the journey I’d watched most of the film piecemeal, and could just about follow the story.
As far as I could tell it was about a guy who wants to marry a sexy girl, but his parents want him to marry an ugly girl. Just when he’s about to marry the ugly girl, he discovers that the sexy girl has been kidnapped by an ugly man who wears black leather and scowls at the camera. The hero rushes out on a horse in search of the kidnapped sexy girl, and has a punch-up in the desert with the ugly man. He’s about to save the sexy girl when it emerges that the ugly girl is in cahoots with the ugly man, and she has somehow tied the father to a chair in the sand and is in the process of pouring petrol all over him. The ugly girl pulls out a box of matches, and they all pause to sing a song. Just then, fifty blokes in black jump out from behind a bush that wasn’t there until they jumped out from behind it and start shooting at the hero, who hides behind a small wooden box. Eventually, he comes out, holding a white handkerchief, but when the ugly man in black comes to gloat (which he does in song) the hero trips him up, steals his gun, and shoots all the fifty men in black who jumped out from behind the magically appearing bush.
